EGYPT:

SECURITY, POLITICAL,
AND ISLAMIST CHALLENGES

Sherifa Zuhur

September 2007

Visit our website for other free publication downloads

http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/

To rate this publication click here.

This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined

in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the
public domain, and under the provisions of Title 17, United States
Code, Section 105, it may not be copyrighted.
 *****

The views expressed in this report are those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the
Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S.
Government. This report is cleared for public release; distribution
is unlimited.

*****

The author acknowledges with gratitute the insights of

other Egyptian colleagues and friends as well as those of Dr. W.
Andrew Terrill, Lieutenant Colonel Charles H. Wilson III, Ahmad
Zalat, Samia Mehrez, Tonia Rifney, Kamal El-Melbawy, Colonel
Cindy Jebb, Dr. Steve Metz, Professor Douglas Lovelace, Dr. Larry
Goodson, and cooperation from Colonel Teddy Seel and Colonel
Kenneth Shive.

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War
College, 122 Forbes Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5244.

*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications are available

on the SSI homepage for electronic dissemination. Hard copies
of this report also may be ordered from our homepage. SSI’s
homepage address is: www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil.

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail

newsletter to update the national security community on the
research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and
upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter
also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research
analysts. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please
subscribe on our homepage at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.
mil/newsletter/.

ISBN 1-58487-312-4

ii
 CONTENTS

Foreword. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Egypt’s Visibility in the New Middle East . . . . . . . 2
Egypt as a Security Concern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Failing, or Failed?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
The “New Middle East” and Anti-Americanism . . . . 9
Roadblocks to Democracy in Egypt. . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Egypt’s Significance in the Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Military and Security Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Aid, Need, and Violence in a “Failing State”. . . . . . . 18
Development and Violence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Economic Standing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Subsidies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Poverty, Alienation, and the Link to Militancy . . 26
Literacy and Gender Inequality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
National Character Arguments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Egypt’s Democratization in the Regional Context . . 29
Egypt’s Political Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Democratic Trends versus Dynastic Succession. . 33
Indicators for Democratization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Egypt’s Regional Role. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Egypt’s Role in Global Jihad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Islamist Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Hereditary Succession?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Leadership Alternatives? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
True Obstacles to Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Is There a U.S. Role in Democratization?. . . . . . . . . . 46
Islamism and Radicalism in Egypt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Growth or Diminishment of Violence? . . . . . . . . . 49

iii
Islam and Politics in Egypt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
The Muslim Brotherhood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Shifts under President Anwar al-Sadat. . . . . . . . . 56
New Radicals, and the New Jihad under Sadat
and Beyond. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Islamist Methodological Arguments. . . . . . . . . . . 62
Radicals and Moderates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
A War with Islamism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
The Brotherhood and the Government. . . . . . . . . 68
Other Types of Repression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Containing Radical Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Truce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Al-Qa’ida’s Relationship with Egyptian
Islamist Militants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Zawahiri. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Reemegence of Jihad in Egypt?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Revenge or Underdevelopment?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Other New Actors—Women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Al-Qa’idism and Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Moderates: The Greater Enemy?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Bedouin Radicalism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
No Solution?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Other Objections to Moderate Islamists. . . . . . . . . 91
Ideological Containment of Threats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Climate of Radicalism?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Perpetual Transitions?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
2005 Elections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
The Judiciary in the Recent Elections. . . . . . . . . . 101
Preemptive Reform? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Endnotes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
About the Author. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

iv
 FOREWORD

Egypt is a major power and political force in the

Middle East, as well as a recipient of significant amounts
of U.S. aid for military and economic purposes. It is
triply important to American interests in the region as
a participant in an important peace treaty and accords
with Israel, in the ongoing Global War on Terror, and in
its own transition to a more democratic and prosperous
nation.
In this monograph, Dr. Sherifa Zuhur argues that
the Egyptian government’s efforts to retain tight control
over the political landscape is impeding the
democratization process. In the name of antiterrorism,
these efforts may not put an end to sporadic outbreaks
of militant violence which reemerged after the 1999
truce with the larger of these radical groups. The
long-protested official state of emergency which
grants the Egyptian government extraordinary
powers has been extended, and that action required
constitutional amendments which were recently
approved by referendum. These will be bolstered
by a new antiterrorism law. The political opposition
has protested these actions, which undo some of the
progress previously made with judicial supervision of
elections, and prohibit the largest Islamist organization,
the Muslim Brotherhood, from transitioning
into a legal political party. As a background for
understanding these events, Dr. Zuhur explains the
nature of problems inherent in Egypt’s political and
economic development, and how these relate to the
various militant Islamist movements emerging within
it. This explanation and the current dilemma challenge
some of the typical recommendations that are seen in

v
discussions of the “failing” or “failed state” models.
The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this
monograph as a contribution to the national security
debate on this important subject.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director
Strategic Studies Institute

vi
 SUMMARY

This monograph approaches three issues in contem-

porary Egypt: failures of governance and political
development, the continued strength of Islamism, and
counterterrorism. It is easier to tackle their contours in
Egypt if they are considered separately. They are not,
however, separate or independent; continuing to treat
them as mutually exclusive conditions will lead to
further crisis down the road.
Egyptian failures of governance have taken
place through three eras: monarchy and the liberal
experiment, the period of Arab socialism, and Egypt’s
reopening to the West under Presidents Sadat and
Mubarak. In combination with a large military and
security establishment in Egypt, these failures meant
a continuing authoritarian government has served and
used its military and security apparatuses to block
significant political transformation. The failures of
governance provide grievances for Islamist militants
and moderates, and also for many ordinary Egyptians,
and inhibit the growth of political or civic maturity.
The Egyptian government forged a truce with its
most troublesome Islamist militants in 1999. However,
violence emerged again from new sources of Islamist
militancy from 2003 into 2006. All of the previously
held conclusions about the role of state strength
versus movements that led to the truce are now
void as it appears that “Al-Qa’idism” may continue
to plague Egypt, and indeed, the region as a whole.
In consequence, an important process of political
liberalization was slowed, and in 3 to 4 years, if not
sooner, Egypt’s political security and stability will be
at risk. Widespread economic and political discontent

vii
might push that date forward. In addition, continuing
popular support for moderate Islamism could lead to
a situation where the current peace could erode, unless
a comprehensive peace settlement to the Palestinian-
Arab-Israeli conflict is achieved and if various other
factors were to come into play.
Observations for the future and recommendations
made in this monograph include the following ideas:
1. U.S. policymakers can expect to see the continued
emergence of radical Islamist elements in Egypt
due to the regional spread of jihadist ideology,
failures of governance, repression and injustice
in counterterrorist measures, and antipathy to
Western and Israeli policies.
2. Economic progress is being made in Egypt, but
more needs to be done to ensure the stability of
the population.
3. Policymakers need to acknowledge the
strength of Islamism in Egypt and consider
that the legalization and inclusion of moderate
Islamists—a trend in Iraq—may inhibit radical
Islamists as well as popular disaffection.
4. While the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is
committed to justice for the Palestinians, the
organization as a whole has shifted on many
other issues. It would be unwise to support
governmental attacks on this group simply on the
basis of this issue, or to promote democratization
only if it excludes Islamist actors.
5. Policymakers should realize that Egypt will
come to a political turning point by 2011, if not
sooner.
6. U.S. policymakers need to educate themselves
about the second effects of Egypt’s economic

viii
 transformation and development plans. They
should encourage the Egyptian government to
reform public education and health-care more
thoroughly and establish a means for citizens
to participate in consensual community-based
decisions. A more civic-minded culture needs
to be created.
7. U.S. policymakers should insist that the
Egyptian government ensure the political and
human rights of citizens, ending the use of
torture, extra-legal physical abuse, and irregular
detentions, and reinstate judicial oversight of
the electoral process. The mistreatment of the
political opposition, prisoners, and the electoral
violence and irregularities of the last several
elections have no place in a free and democratic
Egypt.
8. U.S. policymakers should be aware of Egyptians’
distaste for American views expressed about
Islam and Muslims in the “war of ideas.”
Treating Egyptian Muslims as if they are the
source of the war on terror instead of an ally in
that war is counterproductive.
9. Egyptians should not be excluded nor
shut themselves out of the discussions on
counterterrorism and the future of the Middle
East, which take place on the American
policymaking stage.
10. U.S. policymakers should consider the 2006
critique of U.S. military aid given to Egypt
and the demands for political reform and
cessation of support to Gazan militants in a
2007 congressional bill attached to a portion—
$200 million—of that aid. The large size of the

ix
security forces in Egypt (at 1 million persons),
in combination with the military and its political
economy, requires frequent review, particularly
in tandem with an understanding of Egypt’s
regional foreign policy. The attempt to tie
military aid to Egypt’s internal policies angered
Egyptian officials. A new ten-year military
assistance plan was announced at the end of
July 2007. The linkage of aid to reform could,
however, resurface in the future.

x
 EGYPT:
SECURITY, POLITICAL,
AND ISLAMIST CHALLENGES

INTRODUCTION

Overview.

This monograph addresses three issues in contem-

porary Egypt: failures of governance and political
development, the continued strength of Islamism, and
counterterrorism. It is easier to tackle their contours in
Egypt if they are considered separately. They are not,
however, separate or independent; continuing to treat
them as mutually exclusive conditions will lead to
further crisis down the road.
The Egyptian government forged a truce with its
most troublesome Islamist militants in 1999. However,
violence emerged again from new sources of Islamist
militancy from 2003 into 2006. All of the previously
held conclusions about the role of state strength
versus movements that led to the truce are now void
as it appears that “al-Qa’idism” may continue to
plague the country or, indeed, the region as a whole.
In consequence, an important process of political
liberalization was slowed, and in 3 to 4 years, if not
earlier, Egypt’s political security and stability will be
at risk. Widespread economic and political discontent
might push that date forward. In addition, continuing
popular support for moderate Islamism could lead to
a situation where the current peace could erode if a
comprehensive peace settlement to the Palestinian-
Arab-Israeli conflict is achieved, and if various other
factors were to come into play.

1
 A glossary of terms that may be unfamiliar to
the reader is located at the end of this monograph,
following a list of references.

Egypt’s Visibility in the New Middle East.

Only by examining what American policymakers,

and more generally Americans, do not know, can we
begin to explain the need for concern about Egypt. In
particular, we must explain why Americans should be
so concerned when the country is nearly invisible in
the American media but for reruns of “The Mummy”
and occasional footage of the Great Pyramids of Giza.
Egypt’s political development and stability in the
context of the global war on terror (GWOT) and the
Arab-Israeli conflict should concern U.S. policymakers
as well as ordinary Americans today, and in the future.
At a minimum, the reemergence of Islamist radicalism
in Egypt and the stability and future of the regime
should be considered. President Husni Mubarak, who
is 79 years old and serving his fifth term as President,
is not expected to run for that office in 2011. It is no
longer clear that a large number of Egyptians will
passively accept a successor put forward by Mubarak,
or even the military, from whose ranks all presidents
have been drawn since the end of the monarchy in
1952.
This invisibility is not the case within the Middle
East, where the regional Arabic press, and thus the
Arab people, take note of events in Egypt. For instance,
regional viewers saw footage on and read editorials
about the strikes and labor demonstrations occurring
since December 2006; the unprecedented attacks on
women in the streets at the `Id al-Fitr (the celebration
at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan) in October

2
2006; Egyptian judges protesting; Muslim Brotherhood
followers protesting; voters protesting; the Islamist
extremist attacks at Sinai peninsula resorts; and the
emergence of the political movement known as Kifaya
(literally meaning, “enough!”). Americans did not
view these scenes, and while policymakers may have
been aware through other reporting, they were not
confronted with, and therefore influenced by, media
coverage.
Many Americans know that Saudi Arabians were
among the September 11, 2001 (9/11), hijackers. It
might not be as recognized though that the 9/11
organizer, Muhammad Atta, was an Egyptian, as is al-
Qa’ida’s main spokesman, Ayman al-Zawahiri. If this
is all that is really known about Egypt’s connections
with militance, then Americans would benefit from a
more detailed understanding of this Muslim, Arab, and
African country in which radical Islamism emerged,
retracted, and reappeared, where poverty coexists
with energetic entrepreneurship and where the
“NGOization” of social enterprises colors perceptions
about globalization.

Egypt as a Security Concern.

U.S. policymakers should have specific concerns

about Egypt for the following reasons. First, the
security risks inherent in contemporary Egypt include
threats to its internal stability, to Israel despite a peace
treaty, to other Middle Eastern states, and possibly to
its neighbor to the south, the Sudan.
Second, the country has been held up as an example
of a “failed state” or a potential “failing state.” Egypt
specialists have argued that this is an inappropriate
extension of the “failed state” model; that it better

3
suits the conditions of a country like Afghanistan.
However, the aspect of failing states that is central to the
U.S. GWOT doctrine is that the conditions of “failure,”
whether ungovernability, absence of government, or
poor government, lead to the development of terrorist
groups, and indeed, a militant strand of Islamism
evolved in Egypt. I contend that developmental
problems and poor government are important to the
growth of Islamic militance, but are not the sole reasons
for its emergence. In the discussion below of these
movements and the Egyptian government’s response,
this should become more evident.

FAILING, OR FAILED?

Literature on “failed states” is not, for the most part,

the production of Egypt or Middle East specialists or
coming from within the Arab or Muslim world, with
the exception of militant Islamic jihadists, who indeed
regard their own Muslim governments as having failed
in their Islamic duties. Within the works of regional
specialists, the notion of a “failed state” is replaced
by a different, extensive literature on political and
socioeconomic development. That is because Egypt,
with its gigantic bureaucracy, large population, and
multiple development problems, has never failed in
the sense of actually ceasing to exist, or erupting in a
full-blown revolution. The 1919 Revolution was more
precisely a popular protest, and the 1952 “Glorious”
Revolution, a military coup. Instead of crashing to a
halt, everything connected with the state bureaucracy
lumbers on, while outside of its purview, things rush
chaotically forward, like traffic.
Any predictability within this chaos, its black
humor, perennial hope, and the complex manner in

4
which political events and influence take place are
obscured if the contemporary Western model of the
failed state is applied. Failure in this predominantly
governmental and non-academic Western construct
would argue, just as the scholarly political development
construct does, that Egypt’s unsuccessful distributive
and planning functions, and its stunted political
participatory features are promoting unrest, and that
despite a huge security force structure, sanctuary
remains for terrorists. This does not mean the West is
perfect, or that Egypt lacks any democratic potential.
Certainly the poor in America have long been aware
that American distributive functions need better
oiling, and Hurricane Katrina might have alerted other
more comfortable Americans to this fact. Still, Egypt
is far from an ideal model for other Middle Eastern
governments, particularly in its distributive failures,
but also in other aspects of governance.
The failed state notion is mostly significant in
providing an explanation for terrorism, specifically
Islamist terrorism, in turn encompassing terrorists and
al-Qa’ida members who came from Egypt, as well as the
Islamist violence that emerged from the 1970s to 1999,
and sporadic violence since 2003. Many who adhere to
the failed state thesis also acknowledge the evolution
of Islamic radicalism and terrorism into a global jihad.
That occasional radicalism and terrorism predated the
contemporary Islamist movement (indeed, it dates
back for centuries) is not considered too frequently.
It may be attributed to a perennially militant strand
of Islamism, or in a particularly damaging manner to
some underlying flaws in Islam, the religion, or Islamic
culture or civilization.1 Islamism and Islamist militance
has been developing in a wide variety of social
and economic settings, including England, France,

5
Germany, and elsewhere. We might want to carefully
examine ideological as well as material causes for
events, and then keep track of the strategic evolution
in such diasporic groups. Further, as will be made
clear, such militance is not the only obstacle to political
and socioeconomic development in Egypt. However,
it is certainly true that better governance, distribution,
planning, and enhanced political participation are
desirable in and of themselves. Their realization should
lead to a situation where opposition elements are less
likely to resort to the tactics of terrorism, especially if
we see increased liberty, political participation, and
enhanced democratic and civic values.
A varying definition of failure comes when a state,
as I. William Zartman suggests, either (a) cannot
provide security or services to its citizens, or (b) no
longer performs its basic functions.2 There may not,
however, be agreement on what the basic functions
of the state are, or who they should serve. A state
may only need to provide security and services to
some of its citizens or some of the time. A much
more complex model for understanding states came
out of the earlier comparative politics literature3 in
which one key component was the legitimacy of a
regime. These ideas placed a strong emphasis on the
building of political institutions that would enhance
broader political participation. In countries like Egypt
(or Syria), representation of the common people (the
sha`b or `amma), greater social and economic equality,
and “mass participation” were goals of the Arab
socialist state. By the yardstick of American political
sociology, that type of participation did not lead to
legitimacy since it was strictly controlled by the state
itself. Egypt has been “in transition” ever since the era
of Arab socialism’s emergence, the 1960s. However,

6
that transition was held hostage to the other perennial
function of a state, “providing security”—in this case
for the regime, more than the people of the nation.
Opposition movements almost always emerge
through currents of attraction (pull factors) and the
repelling, discouraging, or repressive nature of their
alternative—the state. In addition to state failure (a
push factor) in Egypt and the ideological attractions of
activist jihad (the pull factor), there is another variable
that explains how jihadist movements grew and then
were contained, only to reappear. This additional
variable is the state’s response to challenges from
both Islamist moderates and militants. In Egypt, the
energetic governmental repression of Islamists, their
families, and often their communities in turn provoked
a militant response, in some cases from those not
previously disposed to militant action.4 For example,
in Upper Egypt, a thoroughly underdeveloped and
impoverished region, state-sanctioned violence created
a tha`r (revenge) cycle between Islamists and police,
similar to Sunni-Shi`i violence in Iraq from February
2006.5 More recently, Egyptian and European-based
analysts have traced the Sinai attacks of 2004-06 to
rampant repression of the Bedouin combined with
their earlier underdevelopment and alienation.6

DEMOCRACY

In 2005, President Bush declared, “The survival

of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the
success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for
peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all
the world.” These words appeared to support a more
genuine democratization process in the Middle East; a
transformation intended to deny shelter to terrorism,

7
and one that would inspire a new sense of entitlement
and self-investment of citizens in the region.
Democratization has long been a feature of U.S. policy
in the Middle East. It was expressed differently for many
years not only by the U.S. Government, but by other
institutions as the aim to create “liberalism” in a political,
economic, and ideological sense. However, President
Bush had already newly prioritized democratization
in his first term’s Middle East policy.7 The region as
a whole was abuzz with the debates about “enforced
democratization,” “democracy through the barrel of a
gun,” “indigenous democracy,” “gradual democracy,”
and so on. American democracy promotion, both in
the past decades of U.S.-Egyptian relations and in the
democratization program since 2005, has experienced
some real problems in perception, substance, and
efficacy. As Daniel Brumberg has pointed out, the
hopeful official discourse of democratization in 2003
did not necessarily reflect our actual policies. For at
least a decade, U.S. democracy aid programs have more
often “sustained rather than undermined liberalized
autocracy,” because of their formulation and bottom-
up strategies.8 When programs fund or interact with
small groups at the level of “civil society,” meaning in
Egypt nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) which
tend to be pro-democracy in outlook to begin with,
they are typically not converting people to a new way
of thinking about their government. Similar NGOs run
into problems with the Egyptian Security Services,
which have a role in NGO registration and monitoring.
And finally, by definition, this type of program is not
engaged in reforms of governmental structure or
procedures. Brumberg observes that the liberalization
of autocracies in the Middle East, which is occurring for
reasons that go beyond U.S. stimulation, has stymied,
rather than forwarded democracy.9

8
THE “NEW MIDDLE EAST”
AND ANTI-AMERICANISM

It should also be noted that anti-Americanism

has increased in Egypt ever since the televised
bombardments of Afghanistan along with the Taliban
government as a response to the events of 9/11.
Egyptians, like many in the region, were very concerned
by declarations made about the War on Terror that
appear to target Muslims and their beliefs, and that
anxiety was heightened by the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
President Mubarak opposed the plan to conquer Iraq
and replace Saddam Hussein’s government because he
believed it would enrage radical militants in the region,
and he went so far as to say it would create “100 bin
Ladins.”10 Many Egyptians, like many Muslims in the
broader Islamic world, find confirmation in the media
and in events in the region that the U.S.-declared War
on Terror is, in their view, a War on Islam. Most were
shocked and distressed by the events of 9/11. They
absolutely do not want militants to overtake their
streets and jeopardize their businesses and incomes.
Most do not want the outlawing of alternate Egyptian
ideas, books, or cultural production like the Taliban
did. Still, following 9/11, many Egyptians were deeply
troubled by the destruction and loss of civilian life in
Afghanistan, and then horrified by the large number
of civilian deaths and sectarian strife in Iraq. Populism
and Muslim values mean an identification with the
poor and hapless bystanders who were, it seemed to
many in the region, pawns in a global campaign that
went far beyond avenging 9/11.
In addition, the idea that Islam by itself generates
violence has been a long-standing Western theme in
literature and the study of the Muslim world, dating

9
back to the medieval era. The heightened, or more
frequent, efforts to equate “terrorists” with Muslims,
particularly those unpopular to the United States
whether in their political stance toward Israel or their
rejection of an American presence in Iraq, have stirred up
the ire of many Egyptians. Whether it was the Western
reaction to the incidents over the Danish cartoons that
mocked the Prophet Muhammad and the riots that
ensued in the Muslim world; or the statements made
by Pope Benedict XVI that misinterpreted, erred, or
oversimplified Quranic pronouncements and Muslim
teachings;11 or other events, the general impression
in Egypt is that the negative trend in Western-Islamic
relations is intensified by policies emerging from the
GWOT campaign.
Similarly, there is antipathy to the American project
of democratizing the Middle East. Extreme anger at the
“arrogance” of American-mandated democratization
was expressed in 2003.12 Others who support President
Mubarak were puzzled by some official statements and
asked why the United States, which had been firmly
supported by their president, should now appear to be
withdrawing support from the Egyptian government.
Spokespersons for the Egyptian government took the
position that Bush was not really critiquing Egypt;
rather the region should follow in Egypt’s footsteps
in gradual democratization. Foreign Minister Ahmad
Mahir nonetheless observed that even undergraduates
know that democracy refers to self-representation,
which by definition cannot be imposed from without.13
Over the last 2 years, the United States has appeared to
back down from any strident calls for democratization
and continued its strong support of the existing
government, although slapping its wrist lightly for
not more thoroughly opening the electoral process.

10
The Egyptian regime has made the most minimal of
compromises; the dominant political party, the National
Democratic Party (NDP), has drawn up its own plan
to create political reforms and yet retain as much of
its own power as possible. Under the leadership of the
President’s son, Gamal, the party actually blocks a true
transition to democracy, at precisely the same time as
it claims to be enacting it.

Roadblocks to Democracy in Egypt.

Meanwhile, for those who believe that increasing

liberty (even a little) will decrease terrorism—certainly
one aspect of the “failed state” model—Egypt simply
has not become more “free.”14 One reason was that a
new flurry of violence by small, new, or heretofore
unknown extremists had to be dealt with, and the
president refused to do away with the emergency
law that empowers the security establishment.
Another obstacle is the complex, unwieldy nature
of the bureaucracy and the equally complex way in
which privatization efforts benefit some Egyptians
through rampant corruption. Other U.S. and Egyptian
multinational donors support privatization, in contrast
to some of the sharpest Egyptian economic critiques
of the Mubarak government’s performance which
show that the economic changes in the country are not
benefiting its people. Even supporters of privatization
express numerous cautions and caveats about the way
it is being enacted.15 Lack of political development
also produced long-standing forms of corruption and
expectations of votes for politicians in exchange for
patronage, a kind of informal distribution system. These
aspects of life in Egypt, along with the bribes necessary
in an underpaid bureaucracy, have contributed to the

11
growth of an entire “second” and informal economic
and political, even cultural space.16
What is important is that the government’s
sluggishness to open and alter the system is now
more vociferously protested by a larger number of
people than in the past. That may possibly mean a
larger potential for violence. Due to the perennial
characterization of Egyptians as being jocular and
nonviolent, or the more accurate observation that
violence gets in the way of making a living, and that
the large military and security services would probably
not support a wave of political violence, one has to be
cautious in making such predictions, but indeed, it
does seem that the political mood is now different. This
new wave of popular discontent ties in with Egypt’s
tradition of populist discourse which repeatedly
emerged in the official and unofficial descriptions of
the 1919 Revolution against the British; then the 1952
Revolution, the coup that ended the monarchy of King
Faruq II; in the massive demonstration against Nasir’s
resignation in 1967; in the riots against the dropping
of subsidies in 1977; in the Central Security Forces
rebellion in 1967 (also for economic reasons); and the
popular discontent shown since 2004-05 over political
issues.
In the last 5 years, during which the discussion of
a “New Middle East” has been the centerpiece of U.S.
foreign policy, a new round of sporadic Islamist violence
disrupted the tourist industry in Egypt. It shook the
complacency and certainty that Egypt’s 1999 truce with
major Islamist groups, the Gama`at Islamiyya and the
Egyptian Islamic Jihad, had solved the country’s crisis
with terrorism, and that 9/11 was an aberration, or an
act by terrorists that Egypt had expelled. How Egypt
will cope with a continuing sporadic jihadi challenge,

12
if it continues in that country, speaks to the future of
the Long War.

EGYPT’S SIGNIFICANCE IN THE REGION

Egypt’s population of more than 78,877,000 in

2006 (estimated by the Central Intelligence Agency at
80,335,036 for 2007, including those abroad) is more
than one-quarter of the entire population of the Middle
East. The country’s ancient history and strong influence
on the region is usually attributed to the productivity of
the Nile River valley. Egypt’s agricultural production
of cotton, along with its strategic importance since the
building of the Suez Canal, explained Great Britain’s
economic and political interests in the country. These
interests persisted after Egypt’s nominal independence
in 1922, beyond a hard won treaty with the British in
1936, and an expected exodus from the Canal Zone
in 1949. While the British actually hoped for a pliant
leader in Gamal abd al-Nasir to delay their withdrawal,
he was not their man. A series of events that drove a
political wedge between the United States and Egypt
led to Nasir’s nationalization of the Suez Canal. Britain
then plotted with France and Israel, expecting that
a three-pronged attack on the country would bring
down Nasir’s government. Instead, the Suez War of
1956 greatly enhanced Nasir’s popularity in the region,
allowing him to promote ideas of Arab unity and
nationalism while accepting military and economic
aid from the Soviet bloc. That further blackened (or
“reddened”) Egypt’s image into something of an
“enemy state” in the Eisenhower-Dulles era. As the
United States promoted the Baghdad Pact to further
its interests in the area, Nasir railed against it. His

13
influence over much of the Arab region was very
pronounced until the 1967 war with Israel. Therefore
many identified with Nasirist themes—Arab unity,
pride in Arab identity, Arab socialism and the intent to
move the disenfranchised out of a feudal past.
Egypt’s intellectual impact on the broader Islamic
world was once again demonstrated as the sahwa, the
Islamic awakening or revival, emerged in the 1970s
as a reaction to the military defeat by Israel, and in
response to the failures of secular nationalist parties
and Arab nationalism as a political force (rather than
merely a locus for identity). While a large number
of figures could be mentioned, examples of both
moderate and radical Islamist influences coming from
Egypt that have greatly affected the Muslim or Arab
worlds include Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the
Muslim Brotherhood in 1928; Sayyid Qutb, a Muslim
Brotherhood leader executed in prison in 1966 by
President Nasir; Muhammad Abd al-Salam Faraj of
the Egyptian Islamic Jihad group, the organization that
assassinated President Anwar al-Sadat, whose tract, al-
Farida al-Gha’iba (The Missing Duty), which promoted
militant jihad, had a strong influence on other Islamist
organizations; Ayman al-Zawahiri, Egyptian militant
and “number two” man to Usama bin Ladin; and the
more moderate Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an exiled Muslim
Brotherhood shaykh whose popular television program
on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera channel has given him a huge
audience (like Amr Khaled, an Islamist televangelist
who is not a cleric but promotes a modern, “relevant”
Islam “of the heart”).
The Islamist awakening in Egypt is not restricted to
the political opposition, or what we could call “political
Islam.” It has its proponents among ordinary citizens,
teachers, professionals, government employees, and

14
members of the military. It has not indelibly colored
the broader Islamist movement with an Egyptian style,
however, because of the simultaneous development
and popularity of other salafi or purist movements,
whether coming from Saudi Arabia, or Jordan, or the
Shi`i Islamist influence of Iran, the Iraqi organizations,
or Hizbullah.

THE MILITARY AND SECURITY SERVICES

Egypt is also important to the United States because

of its military strength. With a force of 450,000 active
troops in addition to reserves, and paramilitary forces
estimated from 405,000 up to one million depending
on the source, Egypt is a major military player in the
region. The country’s paramilitary strength solidifies
regime stability, while its potential military strength
makes it one of the keys to any eventual achievement
of a lasting peace between Israel and the Arab states.
From 1999 to 2005, Egypt spent about half its Foreign
Military Financing funds on equipment such as
F-16 aircraft, Apache helicopters, and M1A1 tanks.
Egyptian and American officials, in defending the
Foreign Military Financing for Egypt, have given other
examples of Egyptian support for U.S. goals, including
the training of 250 Iraqi police and 25 Iraqi diplomats
in 2005, the deployment of 800 military personnel to
the Darfur area of the Sudan in 2004, the deployment
of medical and military hospital staff to Bagram Air
Base in Afghanistan from 2003-05, expedited transit
of 861 U.S. naval vessels through the Suez Canal and
security support for these ships from 2003-05, and
over-flight permission to 36,553 U.S. military aircraft
from Egyptian airspace from 2001-05.17
In addition to the U.S. military troops deployed
to Egypt for the biannual exercise Bright Star, there

15
are usually about 600 U.S. troops stationed at the
Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) bases at
North Camp in the northern Sinai peninsula at al-
Gurah, about 25 kilometers from the Israeli border, and
South Camp at Sharm al-Shaykh at the southern end of
the Sinai between Sharm al-Shaykh and Naama Bay,
with about 30 monitoring stations in between to make
certain there are no violations by Egyptian or Israeli
forces, and also to ensure the navigability of the Straits
of Tiran. The MFO, with troops from 10 countries, was
created in 1979 after the 1978 Camp David Accords
and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty of 1979, and was
set up in 1982.18 The MFO have been attacked twice in
outbreaks of Islamist violence in the Sinai, which leads
to questions about the vulnerability of U.S. or other
foreign forces in the country.
As for Egypt’s own forces, there are questions
about the modernization of its military and the
interoperability that could be achieved between the
United States and Egypt. Egypt’s own force differs
greatly from that of the United States due to its
required, rather than voluntary, nature. Also, the size
of the military and paramilitary should raise some
concerns. As one of the largest employers in Egypt,
the military has benefited from, yet inhibited political
and economic transformation in certain ways. Robert
Springborg wrote about the military’s growth in arms
production and also in nonmilitary production in the
late 1980s. The metamorphosis of the military into
producer as well as employer is now an important
chunk of the economy, and helps to assure the loyalties
of the military to the government and the dominant
party, the NDP. One of Egypt’s most important arms
customers in the 1980s was Saddam Hussein of Iraq;19
these sales were encouraged by the United States,

16
which at the time supported Iraq in its war with Iran.
A controversial aspect of the military-nonmilitary
production concerned the redirection of U.S. Agency
for International Development (USAID) funds of $200
million to be directed to General Motors in a deal with
NASCO signed in 1986. The deal, which the military
hoped would establish an engine plant, required
steering by then Minister of Defense Muhammad Abd
al-Halim Abu Ghazala. The military also moved into
food production, and to that end land reclamation,
with the military ultimately favoring sales and transfers
into the private sector, which support the ongoing
patronage system funding the semi-civilian-military
complex. Retired military and key business leaders
similarly appropriated touristic and construction
efforts. Such profit-seeking endeavors went far beyond
new planned developments of housing for military
and police in various parts of the capital. Interestingly,
as tensions rose with the more militant Islamist groups
as well as the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood
in this period, the military leadership separated itself
from the repressive policies of the Interior Ministry
under Zaki Badr.20 This protected the military, at least
to a degree, in the eyes of the general population.
The situation has not changed fundamentally in the
intervening years—that is to say, one obstacle to any
democratization shifting power away from the NDP
lies with the military leadership and the civilian-
military productive complex.
The security services are often referred to as the
State Security Investigations Sector (SSIS), or Amn al-
Dawla. They ensure the security of the state, provide
intelligence, and have a stake in protecting the NDP’s
interests, so long as the dominance of that party
is directly tied to the fortunes of the government.

17
While at one time, in 1973, the Egyptian military was
estimated at one million and is now greatly reduced,
the security forces have grown to an estimated one
million members.21 The entire apparatus encompasses
the General Directorate for State Security Investigations
(GDSSI, or Mubahath al-Dawla) under the Ministry
of Interior, which principally deals with matters of
internal security; the Mukhabarat al-`Amma under the
President, and the Mukhabarat al-Khabiya, military
intelligence under the Ministry of Defense, which also
provide intelligence. In addition, the security apparatus
operates special courts that hear cases related to national
security threats tried under both the criminal code and
other types of cases under emergency laws. These may
be referred to as either National Security Courts, or the
Supreme State Security Courts (Mahkamat Amn al-
Dawla al-`Ulya).
Since the Nasir era, the security forces have held
a controversial political role in ensuring state control
over dissent and opposition. Security forces also have
played a strong role in other authoritarian Arab states
(such as Iraq, Syria, and Jordan), but in Egypt they are
far more important than the police. In Egypt, under
different Ministers of the Interior, the tactics of the
security services have varied. In their unleashing to
more vigorously combat the Islamist threat in the 1990s,
they also demonstrated brutality and determination
to control civil society actors, namely NGOs working
toward democratization, or which were trying to
document human rights abuses of various types.

AID, NEED, AND VIOLENCE

IN A “FAILING STATE”

Israel has received $3 billion per year from the

18
United States. Now it will receive $30 billion in a new
ten-year military assistance agreement. The United
States has in the past provided Egypt with more aid
than that given to any other country with the exception
of Israel. Until a reduction in aid began, Egypt was
receiving an estimated $1.3 billion in military aid and
an additional amount, which in 2006 was $495 million,
tied to economic reforms. The overall plan for aid
distributed through USAID for 2004-06 is shown in
Table 1. The economic aid is to support the country’s
needs, but does not represent the total of those needs by
any means. In addition, Egypt saw a substantial amount
of its debt reduced as a trade-off for participation in
the 1991 Gulf War.

Objectives SO Number FY2004 FY2005 FY2006

Creating Jobs through Trade 263-016 472,340 428,309 426,500

and Investment
Infrastructure 263-018 7,400 2,000 1,100
Environment and Natural Resources
Management 263-019 9,940
Healthier, Planned Families 263-020 29,230 26,900 17,200
Democracy and Governance 263-021 37,050 34,900 25,400
Improved Basic Education 263-022 15,648 38,611 24,800

Total (in thousands of dollars) 571,608 530,720 495,000

Source: USAID, Egypt. Budget Summary. See www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2006/

ane/pdf/eg263-022.pdf.

Table 1. USAID for 2004-06.

The hefty (although reduced in recent years) U.S.

military aid is intended to improve the capability of
the Egyptian army. Some of it was used to upgrade
or replace obsolete Soviet-made weaponry, aircraft,
and vessels. Other elements support training and an
important biannual multinational exercise, Bright Star.

19
The military financing program was studied by the
U.S. Government Accountability Office in a report to
the Committee on International Relations in the House
of Representatives. Strong criticism for the military
financing program to Egypt came from Congressional
Representative Tom Lantos, who stated that there is
no evidence that Egypt has actually transformed its
force into the type of modernized, better-performing
security instrument as intended, despite the high
cost of the program. The report itself found that the
assessment of this program shows that Egypt supports
U.S. interests, including access to the Suez Canal and
to Egyptian airspace, and the Egyptian-Israeli peace.
However, the actual definitions of modernization and
interoperability of the force are neither in place, nor is
there an assessment of progress towards these goals by
the U.S. Department of State (DOS) or the Department
of Defense (DoD).22
Nevertheless, this effort, as other previous and a
more recent (2007) attempts to reduce or change the
terms of this aid to Egypt, has been resisted by the
DOS and the White House. The testimony given to
Congress is useful in understanding the issue and how
aid is actually being linked to U.S. encouragement of
political reform, if we consider these remarks by former
U.S. Ambassador to Egypt David Welch, now the head
of Near Eastern Affairs at the Department of State:

. . . overall we have seen progress toward a more

democratic society in Egypt and we strongly believe
that U.S. aid to Egypt should continue. Egyptians
themselves—from our government interlocutors to the
democracy activists who have courageously taken to the
streets—want a process of reform. We believe that it is
in the U.S. national interest for us to remain involved
and partnered with Egypt in what will be a generational

20
 challenge. With a new generation of leadership preparing
to emerge in Egypt, it is critical to American interests
and to the lives of ordinary Egyptians, that the United
States remain fully engaged in this crucial partnership.23

The most recent congressional effort calls for

withholding $200 million of military aid until Egypt
curbs police abuses, reforms its judicial system, and
prevents weapons smuggling to Gaza. However, the
U.S. Secretary of State promised a new ten-year $13
billion military assistance agreement to Egypt (after
this monograph was written).

Development and Violence.

Egypt’s defense spending and losses in the wars

with Israel, as well as serious failures in its economic
development and planning (the partial implementation
of socialism), left it a poor country. What is more
difficult to grasp since it is so rarely discussed is the link
between economic/political underdevelopment and an
undercurrent of discontent and violence unconnected
to the Islamist variety. Many national or local struggles,
as well as most arguments and vendettas, boil down
to matters of money and the need for it. Timothy
Mitchell has described this legacy of violence in Egypt
over economic gain and need, which has been covered
over by a literature that glorified modernization and
technocratic development which supposedly began in
the 1960s and should have greatly improved the lives
of Egyptians in Mubarak’s Egypt today. Mitchell writes
about the ways that large landowners utilized violence
to control their peasantry, especially the growing
number of landless peasants, or to gain the lands of
others, using torture and even murder to create a
“culture of fear.”24 That culture persisted as the party

21
that claimed to represent the masses, the Arab Socialist
Union, took on a land reform policy, hoping to divert
attention from ongoing popular demonstrations,
marches, and protests against the government as
the rural poor suffered economically.25 Land reform,
however, was abandoned after the 1967 war, meaning
that many of the rural-based elites returned to their
lands, supporting the state political structure and
ensuring continuing distrust by the peasants. All of the
promises made to these “people” were then overturned
in the next decades of economic planning.

Economic Standing.

While no longer at the fourth-world rung of

poverty, the economic situation is still very grim for
the majority of Egyptians in terms of employment,
housing, savings, and health services; worse than is
admitted in national statistics and in business updates.
Of the total, the urban population is 43 percent (rural
57 percent), and the gross domestic product (GDP) per
capita appears variously as $3,810 (Freedom House),
$4,000 (CIA World Factbook), and $3,700 (the Economist).
This puts Egypt behind Jordan’s economic indicators,
but ahead of Syria or Indonesia. However, averaging
may not provide the most accurate picture of the
limited opportunities afforded those without what
is called a “foreign language education”—meaning
matriculation from institutions outside of the national
system, which allows for better jobs and more income.
The undercurrent of violent discontent in the country
has economic as well as political roots, and this takes
on a cultural coloring as well.

22
SUBSIDIES

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the

World Bank, and USAID became quite involved in
economic planning in Egypt during the Sadat years
(1970-81). These agencies have long argued that Egypt
should phase out its subsidies (food subsidies include
bread and wheat flour at reduced prices for all, and
cooking oil and sugar by ration card; in addition to tea
and fuel),26 privatize state enterprises, and create an
atmosphere more conducive for foreign investment.
These are vestiges of the never-fully implemented and
unsuccessful state-led Arab socialism of the Nasir era.
Egypt’s subsidies are quite expensive. External critiques
note for instance that subsidizing bread—a crucial part
of the program—is expensive, and one reason is that it
deflates prices on bread for people who could afford to
pay more, as well as those who cannot. However, there
is a psychological factor in place when a relatively
cheap staple that can allay hunger is threatened. The
country has struggled to achieve various goals in
meeting external World Bank and IMF suggestions
in reducing subsidies, but without public assistance
and certain types of cost controls (housing, rents, and
taxes), the extremely poor and the great numbers of
near-poor would not survive.
Thus transition to a privatized system in which a free
market sparks price increases has also been perilous to
public security. In comparison to the closed economy
that predated the “Economic Opening” in which the
subsidy system first began, the Economic Opening
(infitah) initiated in 1974 under President Sadat made
a wide variety of products available in Egypt to those
who could afford them. The protective tariffs in place
under Nasir decreased under Sadat, as a part of this

23
economic liberalism. The problem is that those of lower
incomes cannot afford the new goods, yet some of their
consumption patterns have irrevocably changed.
The new liberalist order, to many Egyptians,
reinforces the analysis of neo-imperialism that the left
had emphasized, and which has been adopted to some
degree by Islamists and an Islamic Left. However,
these groups promote Islamism rather than socialism
as the solution to the distortions in society.
Some economists complain that the progress
claimed by the Mubarak regime has been mostly
a case of “smoke and mirrors” or falsified success
stories.27 These were preceded by false development
myths, i.e., Egypt’s overpopulation and lack of food.
As Timothy Mitchell points out, nearly every written
treatment of Egypt speaks of a large population on
“too little land”—the Nile Valley—but he suggests
that overpopulation was not really the problem in the
1970s and early 1980s. Nor was lack of food, although a
shift in types of food, its importation, and distribution
throughout society was an issue.28 Others have shown
that in opening the economy, the rise in consumerism
has been detrimental to Egyptian values, promoting
Westernization and heightening anxiety, even for
those doing relatively well.29 The accomplishments of
the so-called “Dream Team,” (Minister of Investment
Mahmud Muhieddin, Minister of Foreign Trade and
Industry Rashid Muhammad Rashid, and Minister of
Finance Yusuf Boutros-Ghali) have benefited foreign
investors, but not necessarily poorer Egyptians. Simply
put, new elites and other wealthy groups are doing
exceedingly well, the middle class that depended
on fixed salaries has suffered, and the poor are still
poor, while some groups had benefited from the new
economic rules (the infitahiyun—those who profited

24
from the Opening) that were initiated in the 1970s.
Minister for Economic Development Uthman
Mohammad Uthman claimed that unemployment
dropped to 8.5 percent from 9 percent in December
2006. However, a different official report showed that
the “average rate” of unemployment “ranges” from
11.7 percent to 23.7 percent.30 Within these figures, low
or high, the government excludes persons who have
real estate assets and leased land. Other estimates of
unemployment in Egypt range from 25 percent to
Egyptian political opposition claims of 40 percent.31
Considering the numbers who are underemployed and
trying to obtain visas for work anywhere (Libya, the
Gulf nations, Europe, or the United States) and those
surviving on state funds, the highest figure appears
the most accurate.
Poverty among the working poor is measured at
$1 a day, and the number of poor working Egyptians
(this excludes many) has declined; in 2000, 52.7
percent of the population lived on less than $2 a day.
The shift in the numbers of Egyptians who now live
on closer to $2 than $1 a day reflects statistics on the
Middle East measured as a whole and has been held
up as a “success” or indicator of decreasing poverty.32
However, inflation has also occurred, affecting the cost
of living, and the “shopping basket” or items that $2
can actually purchase has decreased, even with the
much-disputed subsidies provided in Egypt.33 Rates
of malnourishment reach about 40 percent in some
areas, such as the Sinai Peninsula, Upper Egypt,34 and
pockets of urban and Delta areas, even though overall
malnourishment is declining.
Not all news is bad—NGO and micro-financing
“movements” encourage income-generation (though
not for sufficient numbers of Egyptians); child mortality

25
has decreased (thanks to projects in the private
donor-funded system35 and in spite of the highly
ineffective, mismanaged, unpopular public health
sector undergoing reform36); and caloric intake of
some groups is fairly constant thanks to the continuing
subsidies. The problem is that much of this rests on
donor aid. What would happen if the United States
interrupted that aid, i.e., if a government considered
unfriendly to U.S. interests were to come to power?
In fact, the influence of donor aid is highly disputed
within Egypt, since it is seen as a way of inculcating
economic and political values into local groups that
may further “international control” over Egyptians.

Poverty, Alienation, and the Link to Militancy.

Opinions are divided about the role of poverty or

social alienation in attraction to militancy. The poorest
of the poor are not likely to have the means or energy
to get involved in organized militancy. Marx had
expressed similar opinions about the peasantry, whom
he regarded as too isolated and suspicious to serve as
a vanguard for change and the consequent difficulty in
their mobilization. On the other hand, there is reason to
point to Max Weber’s notion of social anomie operating
in Egypt, which is what people experience as a result
of displacement, alienation, and hopelessness. In
traditional social environments, networks and informal
solutions helped people overcome problems that the
state could not solve. To some degree, people still utilize
these networks. However, other transformations, like
the urbanization of peasants and villages, breakup of
families, or other new negative circumstances, lead
people both to reemphasis on religion, and sometimes
to more extreme ideologies, according to Weberian
views.

26
LITERACY AND GENDER INEQUALITY

The West emphasizes tolerance and equality in

its definitions of democracy. In Egypt, these should
apply not only to political opposition, but also to
women, minorities, and disadvantaged groups like
Egypt’s many homeless adults and children. Freedom
House has defined various factors that evince greater
freedom for women. When applied to Egypt, these
actually indicate a fairly low degree of freedom for
men, although they are legally and economically more
advantaged as compared to women. These factors are
nondiscrimination and access to justice, autonomy,
security and personal freedom, economic rights and
equal opportunity, political rights and civic voice, and
social and cultural rights.
The Egyptian state promoted literacy, believing
that it aids development. Education, like health care,
was nationalized in Nasir’s era. Unfortunately, the
national system of education is overburdened due
to under-resourcing. Many students receive inferior
teaching in double-shift schools, and they cannot pay
for books or private lessons that are necessary to pass
the examinations. University enrollments, as well as
the public sector as a whole, increased dramatically
in size because all Egyptian graduates were promised
employment. However, the government could not
keep pace with demand, and public sector employment
became more and more difficult to obtain. Some
students were diverted to technical schools which
supposedly prepared them for manufacturing and
construction sectors, yet such jobs became difficult to
secure. Despite the promise of education for all, the
male literacy rate is 67.2 percent, and the female literacy
rate is still only 42.6 percent (meaning that nearly 45

27
percent of all Egyptians are illiterate, and 56.4 percent
of Egyptian women).37 The literacy rate for girls aged
15 to 24 is improving, but their matriculation from
school does not translate into more or better-paying
jobs. Although people believe that women are “taking
jobs away from” men, women may make one-fifth of
men’s salaries. The general idea is that men remain
the breadwinners, yet, in fact, women head over 30
percent of households in Egypt. This is just one aspect
of gender inequality in Egypt that illustrates the gaps
between theory and actualization in social change.
Also part of the grand transformation of the economic
opening were decreases in public subsidizations and
protections, alongside large increases in rents on
residences and farmland.38 These various indicators
of economic insecurity are significant to the school of
thought that claims that support for extremist violence
comes from economic desperation. Even if the most
desperate are not actually the largest group of recruits,
radical Islamists are able to honestly point out the lack
of social and economic justice in the country. In their
view, true justice cannot be provided by the Godless,
or jahiliyya (a term for the pre-Islamic era) rulers of
Egypt. Osama bin Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri
are by no means from the ranks of the economically
desperate, and neither are many leading members of the
Muslim Brotherhood. However, increasing economic
desperation could heighten regime insecurity and add
to the cogency of Islamist appeals.

NATIONAL CHARACTER ARGUMENTS

The usual response to fears that Egypt might

ultimately explode from within in the type of civil
violence seen in Lebanon or Iraq is that Egyptians are
not psychologically disposed to violence. (This idea

28
actually contradicts the Orientalist views of the crafty,
violent peasants with their submissive demeanor
proposed by James Mayfield39). A different argument,
emanating from a Marxist view of the sub-(lumpen)
proletariat explains that their poverty impedes the
organization and mobilization necessary for violence
(or effective political opposition as mentioned above
for the peasantry). True, or not, Egyptians are said to
be “moderate” in temperament and religion, or very
stoic, and basically inclined against violence. This
stereotype is probably dangerous and inaccurate.
Raucous political humor in the country shows
that Egyptians may verbally protest or mock their
leadership to a degree that would be unacceptable in
other authoritarian states,40 but that humor can serve
as a safety valve. Certainly much anger against the
regime has grown in the last few decades, and this was
most frequently shown in the public’s rage over NDP
machinations and vote fraud during the 2005 elections.
But these public expressions are dealt with by the
state’s security services.
With all of this background information, let
us consider the issue of democratization and its
implications for the region. When the United States
began a discussion about democratization in the New
Middle East, the starting point was that there were no
democracies in the area, other than Israel. But in fact,
there were quite obviously different sorts of political
systems which had contributed to the Arab Cold War41
of the 1950s through the 1970s.

EGYPT’S DEMOCRATIZATION
IN THE REGIONAL CONTEXT

Approaches to democratization in the Middle

East must differ because of existing demographic,

29
structural, and historic distinctions between the
various nation-states. (See Table 2.) Morocco and
Jordan are parliamentarian monarchies, but Saudi
Arabia’s monarchy is absolutist, though consultative.
Kuwait’s parliament has been obstructive on occasion
to various aims of the monarch, and the parliamentary
objections were finally overcome on the matter of
women’s suffrage. Both Egypt and the Palestinian
Authority feature elected heads of state and members
of a Parliament. However, the Palestinian Authority’s
executive is not fully sovereign, and Egypt’s executive
is far more powerful than any other element in the
government. Egypt elects a parliament, but its transition
from the legislative body of a single mass party that
enacts the will of the executive to a fully independent
legislative body is still underway. There is no mature or

Parliamentary Democracies/ Mass-Party Dictatorship

Parliamentary Systems
• Iraq • Libya
• Afghanistan • Syria
• Lebanon • Egypt (under Nasir)
• Egypt (today)
• Palestinian Authority
• Tunisia

Monarchies Islamic Republics

• Jordan • Iran
• Morocco • Sudan
• Saudi Arabia
• Kuwait
• Bahrain

Table 2. Systemic Differences in Some Middle

Eastern States.

30
“loyal” opposition because the opposition parties have
not been permitted full openness in determination of
platforms, or in their media outlets, and do not behave
as a mature opposition. While presidential candidates
did run against Mubarak in the 2005 elections, they
did so mostly to set a precedent but with no hope of a
victory.
It should be noted that the Palestinian Authority
is a quasi-state without substantive sovereign rights
over its citizens or an army; it is subject to the higher
authority of Israel and the Israeli military. Without
commenting on all of the other Middle Eastern
countries, it should be observed that due to the great
variance in political typologies, there is no one path
to democratization. And, when people of one country
object to some expression of authoritarianism, it is
always possible to point to an even more authoritarian
example in a nearby country.

EGYPT’S POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Egypt produced an anti-imperialist discourse earlier

in the 20th century than any other actor in the region,
causing other Arab populations to view Egyptian
politicians like Sa`d Zaghlul as important leaders and
heroic enemies of colonialism. The characterization of
Great Britain (John Bull) to Egypt (a young damsel who
desires freedom, a Constitution, and the right to frame
her own future) was captured in political cartoons, and
took primacy in memoirs and political essays early in
the century.42 This call for freedom continued after the
partial independence granted in 1922 and amplified
into a cry for social and political freedoms in which
the ordinary Egyptian would gain equality with the
bashawat, the elites.

31
 Achieving these freedoms remains a work in
progress. However, because the many strands of
Egyptian traditional culture and contemporary political
trends are populist and critical of unfair authority as
well as corruption, there is significant political critique
of the overwhelming power of the executive and the
legislative body. The National Assembly functioned in
some ways as it was intended during Egypt’s “liberal
era” from 1922 to 1952. However, the legislature was
still not as independent as it should have been because
of the British presence and influence over the King
and his cabinet. Under Nasir, the legislative body lost
its independence altogether. At his death in 1970, this
situation remained, and has done so until this day, since
the legislature is primarily filled with the members of
the President’s party, the NDP. Now it can be argued
that this critique derives from the opposition, and that
the ordinary Egyptians do not really care and would not
challenge the government’s corruption or the political
contributions deducted from the salaries of public
servants43 so long as the NDP political figures could
meet public expectations. This argument, however,
speaks more to the lack of political maturity in Egypt
than to real resistance to reform.
In addition to the constraints on legislative
authority mentioned above, the judiciary has been
struggling for greater independence. The importance
of law as a means for controlling the executive and the
security services has been seen in increasing numbers
of legal cases mounted against the government by
Islamist defendants at the Court of Cassation and the
Constitutional Court. Judicial insistence to try such
cases without pressure from the executive meant
that the Egyptian court system is more independent
than Syria’s, where the Constitutional Court has

32
been a very quiet place indeed. However, there is
more to the freedom of the judiciary than the use of
the various court levels. The most important struggle
for judges has been their assumption, or attempts to
assume, oversight of the electoral process. Hence,
the spectacle of Egyptian judges being put on trial
for challenging the conduct of the 2005 elections
indicated that their independence is still in its infancy.
An overview of the disparate factors that might
promote or discourage democratization in Egypt is
found in Table 3. Despite the many discouraging
factors in the path toward democratization and a
more demonstrated balance of governmental powers,
it would be astonishing if Egypt now turned toward
dynastic succession in the 21st century. However,
years of extremely weak (and often repressed) political
opposition, a paralyzed workers’ movement, and other
factors have discouraged strong, potentially effective
leaders from challenging the status quo, so this remains
a possibility.

Democratic Trends versus Dynastic Succession.

Unlike his predecessors, President Mubarak has

not appointed a Vice President, although he himself
served as Sadat’s Vice President from 1975 until 1981.
There were calls for him to do so, especially after the
1995 assassination attempt. His failure to establish a
clear line of succession has fueled speculation about
a possibly hereditary succession. The speculation has
been further fueled by Bashar al-Assad’s succession
in Syria—which prompted strong criticism from the
Egyptian opposition, but less so from pro-government

33
 Promoting
Prominence in regional politics
and cultural expression
Judicial independence, though
weak, grows with challenges
mounted in higher courts
Large population and active civil
society
Compromises achieved with
largest groups of radical Islamists
(EIJ and GI)
Discouraging
Years of weak political opposition
and entrenched political repression
Low degree of legislative and
judicial independence
High unemployment and under-
employment
Economic weaknesses including
stresses from privatization,
subsidies, balance of trade, and low
savings

Existing populist discourse Politicized professionals (through

No great enthusiasm for war with
Israel
Active women’s movement
syndicates)
Lengthy “cold” peace
Weakness of and backlash to the
empowerment of women

Table 3. Factors Promoting or Discouraging

Democratization in Egypt.

sources—as well as the appointment of Gamal Mubarak

(one of the President’s two sons, and formerly a
businessman) to the General Secretariat of the NDP;
both events occurred in 2000, significantly enhancing
speculation about Egypt’s future.
Until Gamal Mubarak assumed a leadership role
in the NDP, most observers assumed that Mubarak’s
successor would come from within the ranks of the
military like Egypt’s four Presidents—Naguib, Nasir,
Sadat, and Mubarak himself, a pilot and Commander
of the Air Forces. Initially, there were thoughts that
former Minister of Defense Muhammad Abd al-Halim
Abu Ghazalah, born in 1930, might succeed Mubarak.
This changed when he was rather unexpectedly

34
removed and became a presidential advisor in 1989
and, since around 1993, he has disappeared from the
political scene. Current Defense Minister (and Field
Marshal) Muhammad Husayn Tantawi, born in 1935,
has been constantly at Mubarak’s side, and would
most probably have succeeded him if the last (1995)
assassination attempt on Mubarak had succeeded.
However, Tantawi was rumored to be in poor health in
2000, so those speculating about succession have also
mentioned ‘Umar Sulaiman, the head of the General
Intelligence Department, who is in his sixties. He is not
as visible as a Vice-President would be but is certainly a
powerful figure in the government. Another possibility
could be Magdi Hatata, born in 1941, the chief of staff
of the Egyptian armed forces.
All of these possibilities might be suggested by
those in security studies. But in the angry period that
followed the extension of the emergency laws in 2006,
Egyptians made many other proposals for leadership
because they were disturbed by the prospect of a
hereditary succession, or wanted a change to the NDP’s
dominance.

INDICATORS FOR DEMOCRATIZATION

Strong economic pressures may jeopardize Egypt’s

stability. Egypt has a huge population. Its absolute
rate of poverty declined somewhat during Mubarak’s
rule. However, unemployment and underemployment
create a range of social stressors; many individuals
cannot meet the material expectations of marriage, for
instance. Thus, democratization that might bring any
element of fiscal risk would be opposed by business
interests and, possibly, the disenfranchised who rely
on state subsidies.

35
 The politicization of professionals and intellectuals
through the syndicate system (labor unions are
illegal, so professional syndicates operate in their
place, allowing the government to keep watch over
the various professions) could guide the emergence
of a new political opposition. On the other hand, the
syndicates representing lawyers, physicians, and
engineers were very strongly impacted by the Islamist
trend until the government directly interfered in the
election processes of these organizations. It is not clear
how thoroughly the syndicates influence the country
toward democratization, although they might.
A democratization that empowers Islamists but
reverses progress made for women through legal
reform, or fails to reform remaining obstacles to
equity, would be very disappointing to Egypt’s
women’s movement. Activists worked hard to achieve
legal reforms that address discriminatory aspects of
criminal and family law, i.e., they were finally able to
eliminate the law that encouraged women to marry
their own kidnapper/rapist, and they managed, with
the President’s support, to pass the so-called “khul`”
law of 2000 that provided women an easier method of
divorce.44 The Egyptian President had supported and
enabled many of these changes included in this law,
whereas the Wafd and some Islamists and conservatives
opposed them and vowed to mount legal challenges to
them.

EGYPT’S REGIONAL ROLE

Despite Egypt’s signing of the Camp David Peace

Accords, its peace with Israel is a chilly or “cold” one.
Egypt suffered heavy losses in each war with Israel,
and although there is bitterness over treatment of

36
Egyptian prisoners of war (POWs), there is no great
support for war now. Some objections to the peace
were procedural; though in the absence of democracy
in Egypt it is not surprising that President Sadat acted
unilaterally and without consultation or a referendum
on the issue. This meant that opposition to the peace
agreement was also a means of complaining about
the authoritarian nature of the Egyptian government.
Additionally, many Egyptians objected to the
agreement because of its failure to address the needs
and rights of the Palestinian people, i.e., that was the
view of the Muslim Brotherhood from the beginning,
but also that of many more secular Egyptians. In fact,
Sadat himself was extremely disappointed and angry
about the refusal of the Israelis to negotiate on the status
of the Palestinians. After a fairly short period of time
following the agreement, various elites and sectors
of the population, especially intellectuals, spoke out
against it. The professional syndicates agreed that they
would not be pressured into contacts with Israelis and
would continue a boycott of them, although there was
dissension by some individuals within the syndicates on
this matter. Certain intellectuals, writers, and political
figures wanted to contact Israelis and yet did not give
up their hopes for a just solution for the Palestinians.
While some tourism, primarily Israelis to Egypt and
not so much the reverse, took place early on and some
cultural exchanges were arranged until 1982, these
became the subject of bureaucratic and journalistic
critique, and the Egyptian public was infuriated by
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, turning more
firmly against the compromising nature of the peace
agreement.
President Mubarak eventually mended relations
with the Arab world in a formal fashion in the

37
November 1987 Arab summit resolution that permitted
Arab countries to resume relations with Egypt, and it
regained its seat in the annual Islamic Conference.45
A concomitant slowing of schemes for political and
economic cooperation with Israel also took place.
Paradoxically then, Egypt is able, via the achievement
of the Camp David agreement and its improved
relationship with the United States and the weaknesses
of the very same agreement that permitted the country’s
re-establishment of influence with Arab states, to play
an important role in efforts to diminish conflict vis-à-
vis other Arab players, including the Palestinians.

EGYPT’S ROLE IN GLOBAL JIHAD

Egypt and its future must also concern the United

States because of the emergence of global jihad. While
al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is essentially a
renegade from Egyptian justice whose aims shifted
from the Islamic Jihad organization in Egypt to
the goals of the al-Qa’ida group internationally, he
exemplifies a trend among radical Islamists who once
operated in Egypt and fled precisely because of the
state’s success in repressing them. Some scholars who
have studied the emergence of global jihad, or focused
on militance in Egypt, noted that it was successful local
counterterrorism that contributed to global jihad, both
in the sense of movement and the militants’ taking on
the “far enemy,” the United States. The ringleader of
the 9/11 terrorists, Muhammad Atta, was Egyptian.
The most severe threat to political stability within
Egypt came from the homegrown radical gama`at of the
1970s and later the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ or Gihad
Islami) and the Jama`at Islamiyya (or Gama`at). These
groups aimed to destabilize the Egyptian government

38
and establish an Islamic government based on Islamic
law in its place. While a faction of the EIJ assassinated
President Anwar Sadat and carried out other hostilities
for about a month, they had greatly overestimated
their ability to bring about the fall of the Egyptian
government. There was discussion at the time of the
estimated numbers of radical Islamists who might, like
Sadat’s assassin, be in the armed forces. In contrast
to these groups whose major goal was the downfall
of the Egyptian government and its replacement
with an Islamic government, al-Qa’ida members
were meanwhile emphasizing what Olivier Roy calls
the “globalized ummah” (Muslim community) and
deemphasizing the national identity of radicals or their
opponents; rather, the world is divided into “righteous”
jihadists, evil Muslims and non-Muslims.46

ISLAMIST VIOLENCE

Islamist violence troubled the state in the late

1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s. The state concluded
a truce with the radical Islamists in 1999 which will
be discussed later. There are differences of thought
concerning the emergence of that violence, which
many experts believe was exacerbated by the tactics of
the Egyptian security services. In any case, the truce
did not portend a complete end to Islamist violence
as was generally thought at the time. Egyptians who
considered themselves immune from the radical threat
of any jihadists like those involved in the 9/11 attacks
have been shaken by a resurgence in violence since
2004. These more recent events raise questions about
the potential for victory over Islamist violence, and
others about the degree to which repression begets
violence in a cycle with no apparent end-state.

39
 In 30 years of encounters between radicals and
the Egyptian state, the initially small but troublesome
radical groups threatened and attacked state authority.
In so doing, they actually bolstered the state,47
provided the rationale for operating under emergency
regulations, and inhibited democratic changes. Egypt’s
transition to democracy has foundered today on this
issue, and less clearly on its ongoing transformation
from a populist, public-sector heavy system trying to
convert itself to economic rationality without solving
any of its deepest developmental problems. It is not
moving in an “unwavering path” toward democracy
as Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Nabil
Fahmy has claimed.48 Instead, it seems trapped and
immobilized between the need for stability and tight
control and Egyptians’ democratic desire for liberty and
increasing civic responsibility and transparency that
the Bush government had verbally supported to some
degree until the fall of 2006. With rising unemployment,
inflation, and different types of Islamist pressures on
society, standing still or “politics as usual” is also not a
viable strategy.
Observers who fear that President Mubarak’s son,
Gamal, is being groomed to take over the country
have had a very difficult time bringing their concerns
to the non-Arab world because of the authoritarian
powers granted to the current government. For these
reasons, the small movement, Kifaya—the name means
“enough!”—achieved a significant accomplishment
in creating small or medium-sized public protests. In
September 2005, Kifaya staged one demonstration of
5,000 and another with 10,000 people. Such expressions
of public disapproval formed a contrast to earlier
protest efforts which were, since the containment of

40
the labor movement and other political opposition
groups under Nasir, illegal and punishable by the state
security forces. Over the years, students and citizens
had attempted to hold demonstrations and, if the
purpose was to protest Israel’s actions, or the first Gulf
War (1991), or U.S. bombings of Iraq under the Clinton
administration, the government sometimes allowed
demonstrators to gather if they were not actually in
an uncontained public space. For example, campus
protests might either be allowed or suppressed, or
both. So when Kifaya began its demonstrations and
groups like the Muslim Brotherhood also led protests,
the state security forces have both arrested and
punished protesters, or later, allowed a degree of public
expression. However, as critics observed, there were
certainly limits to Kifaya’s influence. It simply could
not mobilize to the degree needed to more strongly
shake the state (like the Muslim Brotherhood and
other Islamist groups) and probably cannot encourage
large numbers of working-class people to take greater
political risks.49 Hence it has served as more of a catalyst
for protest than a political alternative. Kifaya tried to
draw attention to the constraint over the presidential
and legislative elections and to other actions of the
government.

HEREDITARY SUCCESSION?

Today, many are concerned that Gamal Mubarak,

Husni Mubarak’s son, has been pushed forward as the
leader of reform in the NDP so as to become more well-
known and acceptable to Egyptians, and simultaneously
aid that Party in keeping its strong hold over political
life. In Egypt, where the principles of republicanism
were adopted in 1952, the idea of monarchy, dynastic

41
succession, and elite privilege was challenged. Many
Egyptians were justifiably concerned about a Mubarak
dynesty in the wake of Bashar al-Asad’s succession in
Syria. When sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim began to
criticize the President and his son’s possible succession,
as well the regime’s suppression of civil society’s efforts
to democratize, report on violence against Egypt’s
Coptic Christians, and propose a secure judicial review
of elections to make them more fair, he used a sardonic
term (gumlukiyya)50 to describe Egypt’s contribution to
political development. This play on words—a political
system that sounds both like Gamal’s name and which
rhymes with a favorite Egyptian food, mulukhiyya
and the word for a monarchy—drew ire from the
regime. A hereditary succession in which the current
government keeps its hold over the parliamentary
system, continuing to suppress the legislative and
judicial functions of government at the expense of the
executive branch, will certainly bring no increase in
liberty to Egyptians. Reputable international advisory
bodies like the International Crisis Group continue to
recommend democratization from within the regime,51
apparently not grasping the government and the
NDP’s lack of will for true reform.

LEADERSHIP ALTERNATIVES?

When Egyptians were asked in elections prior to

2005 if they would not like a choice of presidential
candidates, many answered that ever since they had
become adults, “we’ve known no other leader.” Young
people did not live under Sadat’s presidency and in
the NDP dominated government, there were no other
politicians of Husni Mubarak’s stature.52 Without
familiarity with truly outstanding personalities who

42
had served or could serve their country, it was difficult
for them to imagine that an unknown quantity would
make a better president.
Under the new electoral laws, candidates for
president must come from legal parties who already
hold a proportion of 5 percent in the legislative body
and meet other criteria. If these laws were to be
rewritten to legalize more candidates who need not
represent the leadership of eligible parties, or if the
Muslim Brotherhood were legalized, and if elections
were fairly held, one could anticipate other candidates.
In addition to those who already ran for president in
2005 like Ayman Nour (of al-Ghad [Tomorrow] Party),
Nu`man Goma` (Wafd Party), or Tal`at al Sadat (the
nephew of Anwar Sadat of the Ahrar Party), who was
actually tried after the election and sentenced to a year
in prison for “insulting the military,” it is quite exciting
to hear Egyptians discussing possibilities other than a
military succession, or the son of the president. Examples
include a leader from within the Muslim Brotherhood
including members of the Guidance Council, or Dr.
`Isam al-`Arian, a medical doctor and long-time
Brotherhood leader. Several individuals had intended
to run for president but were disallowed under the rules
that restrict candidates to “recognized” parties. These
included feminist writer and former physician Nawal
al-Saadawi, and sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim who
opposed the government’s electoral policies and its
stance of keeping silent on attacks on Coptic Christians
and suppression of civil society. People also mentioned
the names of Tariq al-Bishri (a judge, historian-social
scientist, and Islamist) or Galal Amin (an economist).
Due to disputes with the Minister of Culture over the
veil, figures like Abd al-Wahhab El Messiri, a different
type of Islamist intellectual, are better known. So are

43
Hisham al-Bastaweisy (a judge from the Court of
Cassation who was tried for criticizing the elections),
or Zakaria Abdel Aziz (head of the Judge’s Club), to
mention just a few. The commonly-heard argument
that Egyptians know “no other leader than Mubarak”
is being challenged today, although it is quite true that
without access to the media, it would be very difficult
for any but the Muslim Brotherhood candidates to gain
sufficient public recognition for aggressive electoral
competition.
American policymakers may well believe the
Egyptian government’s predictions that should it and
the NDP weaken, the Muslim Brotherhood would
sweep in, and that this alternative must be staved off at
all costs. This assumption is incorporated in the reports
of various U.S. research institutes, which explain that
secular alternatives to the Brotherhood are too weak,
but imply that the latter are the only proper alternative
in a democratic future. This is hard to understand,
both because religious parties like the Da`wah and
the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq have gained U.S. acceptance as legitimate actors.
The discipline and lengthy experience of the Muslim
Brotherhood shows that it has not participated in
violent action against the government since the 1940s
(the alleged plot in 1954 might have been contrived)
and does seek to play a legitimate role in the existing
Egyptian government rather than moving in an external
route to power.
Abdul Moneim Abu El-Foutouh, a leading Brother,
in response to the question of whether the Brotherhood
should protest its illegal stance and give up on political
participation, states “The institutions of the state are
owned by the people, and if we withdraw from these
institutions, we would be achieving nothing [because]
Islamists will come to power when the system supports

44
democracy and freedom.”53 U.S. observers less familiar
with Egyptian politics fear groups like the Muslim
Brotherhood in part because they are concerned about
that organization’s anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian
stance. We will consider this issue further, but it must be
emphasized that rather than the Muslim Brotherhood,
the most intransigent obstacles to Egyptian political
reform are within the country’s existing regulations
and laws.54

True Obstacles to Democracy.

A substantial literature on the obstacles to

democracy in Egypt exists. Much of it centers around
the unsatisfactory outcome of the 1952 Egyptian
revolution, often labeled “unfinished” or “uncertain.”55
Social scientist Hamied Ansari wrote of a “stalled”
society, unable to carry out the promises of Arab
socialism; and Leonard Binder outlined the growth of a
second stratum that expanded and fed on these policies
like that operating in Marx’s “moment of enthusiasm,”
which helps to explain the role of the military as one
of the beneficiaries of the 1952 Revolution, and then,
the subsequent Infitah, or Economic Opening. Under
Nasir, official values had been populist, and Raymond
Hinnebusch tried to explain the dissatisfying state of
“post-populism,” while Aly Hilal Dessouki wrote about
a state “in crisis.” Robert Springborg had originally
used the terms “patrimonial and fragmented” to
describe the Egyptian system. As the frameworks of
these noted experts on Egypt suggest, the standard
features of Middle Eastern political systems are indeed
very difficult to transform. Another variety of analysis
focuses on the admittedly slow transition to democracy,
rather than its absence.56

45
 All of these obstacles should not be entirely attributed
to individual authoritarian figures. Leaders did have
their role in this process—Nasir who created the Arab
Socialist Union (ASU) and its mass party framework;
Sadat who transformed the ASU into the NDP and then
created tiny opposition “platforms” while, in fact, none
of these constituted truly independent political parties;
or Mubarak who maneuvered reforms to the electoral
system so that the least amount of change possible
would take place. Beyond these leaders, the system of
patronage politics, and patterns of dependence have
pervaded society from the liberal but undemocratic
pre-revolutionary era to the present. There are more
novel features to today’s patronage system—a new
format that contrasts slightly with the old feudalism—
but at no time have the institutions and laws changed
sufficiently so that the legislature and judiciary could
operate with necessary independence. Egypt is not
unique in this regard in the region.

IS THERE A U.S. ROLE IN DEMOCRATIZATION?

The United States promotes democratization as

a general policy and emphasized this process more
avidly as a part of the neoconservative vision of a New
Middle East. Yet the United States can neither strongly
promote, foster, nor demand democratization in Egypt
without fundamental changes to the country’s political
institutions. Historically and today, democratization
programs in Egypt are not geared towards the
transformation of institutions. Rather, they may
strengthen civil society with the establishment of
income-generating NGOs, and some programs that
would enhance civic or community consciousness, as
via the Middle East Economic Development (MEED)

46
program. This simply is not, as was pointed out above,
where the most severe obstacles to democratization
reside.
Further, the grave situation in Iraq may be the
harbinger of what Richard Haass of the Council of
Foreign Relations has called the end of U.S. dominance
in the region.57 His view suggests that anti-Americanism
has increased to a point that the kind of arm-twisting
that has taken place in the years of experimentation
with the New Middle East is at an end. If this is the case,
then the concrete example of “democratization” which
was supposed to inspire the region may not emerge,
or will be so imprinted with sectarian politics as to be
inapplicable outside of Iraq and countries more like it.
In other words, transformations that erode executive
power, i.e., in Pakistan or Egypt, might weaken the
suppressive capacity of the state. It may well be that
despite all the U.S. talk about democratization, the
country more deeply desires stability and dealing with
known quantities.
Another view is that the United States has never been
serious about democratization in Egypt. As evidence,
commentators point to President Mubarak’s response
to calls for democratization in 2005 by making certain
modifications to law in the form of a referendum that
was protested by many groups. The changes allowed
for a multi-candidate presidential election, while
severely tailoring the qualifications for candidates.
Despite these restrictions, Mubarak’s government still
jailed one of his electoral challengers, Ayman Nour,
as well as many hundreds of opposition figures and
would-be voters in the spring of 2005. When Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice was asked to comment on
Nour’s case during her October 2006 visit to Egypt, her
cautious response contrasted with previous remarks
that had vigorously encouraged democratization.58

47
ISLAMISM AND RADICALISM IN EGYPT

At the end of the 1990s, scholars wrote about the end

of Islamic radicalism in Egypt59 or about a post-Islamist
region, although the phenomenon was still growing
elsewhere. Basically, scholars argued that radicalism
was untenable but that participatory politics (with
Islamists participating, but the violent ones rendered
inactive) could achieve change.60
If containment had occurred in Egypt, why
there, and not elsewhere? One argument is that
radicals feared alienating the Muslim public,61 and
had voluntarily switched tactics. Another view is
that a combination of repression and cooptation
had succeeded.62 Ultimately though, the theoretical
questions asked concerning the use of repression and
violence might not have been the proper questions,
and the answers given are not definitive. The question
of the efficacy of state repression is still an open one.
If the Egyptian leadership had “succeeded” through
strongly repressive tactics in containing the two largest
Islamist groups, then is this containment permanent?
Does it count as a success if other smaller groups rise
up and engage in violence instead of GI and EIJ? And,
the Egyptian internal security apparatus has also
applied repressive tactics to the Muslim Brotherhood
since 1995. If violence emerges from repression, why
haven’t moderates reverted to violence? The questions
may have been ill-framed if they proceeded from the
notion that Egyptians are basically nonviolent, so why
would they tolerate group actions that hurt civilians?
Radical groups have engaged in such actions, but the
argument went that their mobilization and recruitment
efforts were damaged when the public thought them
brutal. It might be wise to remember that all around

48
the region—in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia,
and so on—ordinary people have been repelled by
violence, yet such fringe groups have managed to go
on recruiting.

Growth or Diminishment of Violence?

Mohammad Hafez and Quintan Wiktorowicz

explained violence by emphasizing the variables of
system inaccessibility, together with reactive and
indiscriminate repression.63 They do not examine the
power of religious ideology in their model, as do most
earlier works on Egypt which trace Islamic radicalism to
notions of hakmiyya and jahiliyya (the sovereign nature
of God, but not the ruler; and the idea that today’s
world is like the pre-Islamic era) from the work of Abu
al-`Ala al-Mawdudi, and that on jihad and shuhada
(martyrdom) of Sayyid Qutb, a leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood who was imprisoned and put to death in
Nasir’s era.
On the other hand, Anthony Shadid; Geneive
Abdo; Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela (on Hamas);
Judith Harik (on Lebanon); and Quintan Wiktorowicz
(writing on Jordan)64 have all considered the reasons
that some Islamist groups pursue nonviolent means
and exercise political restraint. These works on groups
with broader bases explain violent militant groups
who forswear violence. Raymond Baker, Carrie
Wickham, and others have written extensively about
moderate Islamists in Egypt, namely the Wasatiyyun
who broke away from the earlier generation of Ikhwan
leaders and formed a new party.65 Observations about
such second-generation movements contrast with the
Jordanian case (where the second generation is less,
not more moderate) in Wiktorowicz’s exploration

49
of the issue of formal versus informal organizational
structures.66 Unfortunately, these expert views, which
suggest that groups which need to keep their broad
bases will moderate their behavior as they attempt
to participate politically, primarily explicate just one
possible direction for Islamist groups. Not all move in
that direction—some move towards moderation, while
new violent groups might still emerge and that is what
we have seen with in newly violent actors in Egypt.
At the same time, these well-documented cases of state
repression of moderate or fairly moderate Islamist
groups does not tell us what these groups will do in
the long run, especially if the state continues repressing
them.
Somehow, both in the “histories of jihadism” that
start with Qutb and the 1970s movements, and political
studies of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots,
one can lose sight of something important: that Islamic
appeal in a country like Egypt (or Saudi Arabia), that is
to say a political discourse based on Islamic values, is
unavoidable. Western programs that aim to inculcate
secularism in the region, or “help the moderates” who
are battling with the extremists, are quite difficult to
adopt in light of the highly Islamized public discourse.
This is an essential idea to keep in mind. It is not
realistic to imagine that these large Islamist groups
will disappear.

ISLAM AND POLITICS IN EGYPT

For centuries, Cairo had provided education and

study opportunities to clerics and religious students.
Al-Azhar University in Cairo, founded in 972 A.D.,
and today with an enrollment of some 90,000 students
from 71 countries, was originally a teaching mosque

50
under the Fatimid rulers. It became an influential
school under Sultan Baybars who invited the Abbasid
family and scholars of Baghdad fleeing the Mongols
to Cairo.67 Clerics (`ulama) who were educated here, or
came for a period of study, returned to various parts of
the Sunni Islamic world.
Egypt was later a locus for 19th century Islamic
reform, and subsequently for the emergence of modern
Islamism. This, together with its leadership role in
traditional, quiescent, and “educational” Islam and in
the contemporary intellectual and cultural life in the
Arab world, increased the country’s significance to
modern radical Islamist movements.
It was not the only important country in the
development of Islamic thought and politics.
Wahhabism is a different purist movement that
developed in the Arabian peninsula of the 18th century.
One consequently notes Americans, Egyptians, and
other Muslims, for instance, the Ahbash (an Ethiopian
movement) leader, Shaykh Yusuf abd al-Rahman
al-Harari castigating wahhabiyun (Wahhabis) or
Wahhabism itself as being the source of contemporary
Islamic extremism.68 On the other hand, some experts
blame Egypt or “Qutbism” (the philosophy of Sayyid
Qutb) for the emergence of radical Islam.69 Salafism
has different origins and dimensions, and even anti-
salafist figures and movements produced groups that
aspired to better Islamic governance, like the somewhat
ideologically rigid Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic
Liberation Party) established by Shaykh Taqi al-Din
Nabhani in Jerusalem in 1953.
Prescriptive Islam—how authorities or the state
should order Muslim morality and behavior, a theme of
“political Islam”—has never been far from the surface
in Egypt. Historically, Turco-Circassian rulers, the

51
Muslim clerics, and the military formed three strands
of elite leadership, intermarried, and supported each
other.70 The rulers, clerics, and others utilized Islamic
discourse for centuries to legitimize their actions.
Thus, it is ahistorical to contrast a benign “traditional”
Islam with the politicized ideas of modern radicals as
some analysts do. Islam has always meant more than
private religious practice. Ideas of Islamic governance
did not represent a heresy from a presumed secularist
norm as in the 20th and 21st centuries. Rather, the use
of religion or religious discourse for political purposes
was expected. This may also help us understand why
Islamization has also affected the Egyptian government
in the most recent period.
Western imperialism made its entrance first with
Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798. The shock of
interaction with the French invaders as described
by historian al-Jabarti exposed Egyptians to various
ideas, but, in fact, the French were only briefly in the
country. The military leader, Muhammad Ali Pasha,
who came to rule Egypt, more deeply changed the past
order with his centralizing and statist policies. A more
difficult encounter with Western imperialism arrived
with the British invasion and occupation in 1882. At
this time, an Islamic reform movement manifested
in Egypt and grappled with social ills, political
weakness, educational stultification, and the crisis
of the Muslim intellectual. That movement featured
salafists, individuals like Muhammad `Abduh who
modernized al-Azhar University, and Qasim Amin
and Rashid Rida (of Syria) who provided the seeds of
20th century Islamism. Another movement of Islamic
reform was the catalyst for this phenomenon in Egypt,
the ideas and organization of Hasan al-Banna, the
Muslim Brotherhood. Though certain themes may

52
be also found in the salafism of Rashid Rida,71 an
Islamist heir of the earlier reformers above, in other
respects, al-Banna’s movement was more broadly-
based, working explicitly toward the goal of an Islamic
society. No Islamist movement has been as important
as the Muslim Brotherhood in spreading Islamist ideas
in the Arab Middle East, inasmuch as it proposed an
alternative ideology to that of the ruling groups, first
in the era of liberal nationalism, until 1952, and then in
the age of Arab socialism.

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

(AL-IKHWAN AL-MUSLIMIN)

Hasan al-Banna, a schoolteacher, former leader

of the Society for Moral Behavior and secretary to
the Hasafiyya Sufi order, established the Muslim
Brotherhood in Isma`iliyya, a Suez Canal city greatly
impacted by the British military presence.72 The
members of this group, formally titled the Society of
the Muslim Brethren, are often referred to as Ikhwan
(Brothers). Al-Banna developed a movement to
promote Islamic values that he explicitly declared
not to be a political party. Hasan al-Banna felt that
Egyptian political and social life demanded the revival,
not abandonment of Islamic principles. His movement
emphasized an Islamic solution for youth as well,
contrasting with the international Scouts movement,
very influential in that period, and the YMCA. To
Banna, the nationalist secular parties and their wealthy
landowner representatives were also failing Egyptian
society. These parties, which had obtained partial
independence in 1922, had not been able to effect a
British withdrawal and, more importantly, were not
benefiting the poor, peasant, and illiterate elements

53
in the country. Providing youth development and
educational programs, clinics, Muslim fellowship,
and da`wah (missionary activity), and later a linked
women’s association, the Brotherhood grew rapidly.
Al-Banna developed an interpretation of
hakmiyya (God’s sovereignty, as opposed to temporal
sovereignty) that highlighted the need for an Islamic
state and participation in politics. He wrote about
shura (consultation) somewhat differently than al-
Qa’ida’s theorists; that it was not incompatible with
parliamentary democracy, and also about the distinction
between Islamic history and Islam itself.73 To al-Banna,
the most important principle in an Islamic state is
tawhid, or the oneness of God, which in a political sense
implies more compromises between various factions,
even between secularists and Islamists.
The organization developed a “secret apparatus,”
an underground militant, armed wing in the 1940s.
As the Wafd Party and the monarchy of King Faruq
became discredited due to the former’s cooperation
with the British in this period and the latter’s constant
scandalous personal behavior, the Muslim Brotherhood
presented a viable alternative, and the government
outlawed the Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood
supported the 1952 revolution, a bloodless coup by a
group of military officers. But the new leadership split,
and an alleged assassination attempt on President Jamal
abd al-Nasir by a Muslim Brother in 1954 led to the
government’s imprisonment of some 4,000 members,
many of whom were tortured. One outcome was an
extremely radical element within the prisoners whose
views aligned with Sayyid Qutb’s work, Ma`alim fi tariq
(Signposts on the Road). This work, while possibly not as
important as some of his earlier books, gained more
notoriety with its prediction that jihad and martyrdom

54
were inevitable as Muslims strove to install an Islamic
state. Western democracy, as well as Eastern-style
socialism, had failed to bring justice, only an Islamic
system could do that. Another point of emphasis was
the way that he defined the domain of warfare, dar al-
harb, which traditionally referred to non-Islamic states,
but now could include “any state that fights religious
attitudes of Muslims.”74 That rendered Egypt, dar al-
harb, and its government, a “near enemy.” He also
wrote in a different way about necessary political
changes. In Ma`alim and several other books, Qutb
calls for a revolution, a zalzala (earthquake), to bring
down governments and build new Islamic societies.75
It is not clear in these books that the revolution must
be violent. In the final chapter of his book, al-`Adala
al-ijtima’iyya fi-l-Islam (Social Justice in Islam), the way
forward for Muslims is centered on Islamic education
and the debunking of Western thought.76 In the final
chapter of Ma`alim, Qutb refers instead to the example
of the martyrs of al-Akhdud in the Quran (Surah 85)
who were burned and unavenged. Nevertheless, these
martyrs were freed from life’s enslavement.77
Other Islamists not imprisoned then, later
adopted similar ideas that the Egyptian governmental
leadership represented anti-Islamic values and must
be overthrown. But a larger group of the Brotherhood
held to their original philosophy of gradual change,
and when they were released from prison by President
Anwar al-Sadat in 1971, they agreed to operate
according to the regime’s rules. By that time, Jordanian,
Syrian, Sudanese, Libyan, Iraqi, West Bank, Gazan, and
other branches of the Ikhwan had been established,78
but with no very great support in the heyday of more
secular Arab nationalist political movements.

55
Shifts Under President Anwar Al-Sadat.

Long-term domestic transformations began in the

1970s, including attacks on the Nasirists and the left
and an ouster of the Soviet advisors. The turn to the
West and the need for economic aid led to a new plan,
an economic opening called the infitah. The infitah
broke with the principles of import substitution, and
that meant that with time, many new products would
be available in Egypt, although not everyone would be
able to afford them. It facilitated new types of business
arrangements like joint ventures, and in other ways
allowed the global economy to intrude into Egypt’s,
undoing various types of socio-economic protections.
Although Anwar Sadat promised political liberaliza-
tion, that is simply not what took place. Censorship
was very pronounced under his government, and the
notion that criticism of Egypt, especially from within,
was a crime or treason79 was carried over from abd al-
Nasir’s day. The political system of today is essentially
the product of Sadat’s 1976 changes when tiny legal
opposition parties were introduced alongside the
renamed “mass” governmental party, deliberately
balanced so that no significant alignments could take
place, and the opposition would not challenge the mass
governmental party. That inhibited it from developing
other characteristics of a larger loyal opposition.

NEW RADICALS, AND THE NEW JIHAD

UNDER SADAT AND BEYOND

Small and violent Islamist groups formed, as well

as more militant groups visible to the state. Among
Muslim Brethren jailed in the 1960s was a former
student, Shukri Mustafa, who was imprisoned for

56
distributing the organization’s flyers. He began to
organize an underground group. Meanwhile, as Sadat
loosened restrictions on Islamic organizations hoping
they would balance his opposition on the left, they
gained strength, especially in the universities. At this
time, the government attributed the appearance of
fully veiled women, who wore niqab (the face veil),
long dresses, khimar (a head-covering), and gloves in
the Saudi style in the 1970s, to the Brethren who had
gone to the Gulf during the period when they were
imprisoned in Egypt.
The Muslim Brotherhood obeyed the rules handed
down by the government; it did not seek legalization nor
engage in violence or sedition against the government
in this period. The government passed the Political
Parties Law in 1977 that specifically stated that parties
could not be formed on the basis of religion, that
clause aimed mainly at the Brotherhood. However, the
Brotherhood was able to publish al-Da`wa magazine
from 1976 and then Liwa al-Islam for a time, which gave
indications of its rather comprehensive social as well
as political aims.
The Islamic revival that began in the 1970s was
discomfiting to many Egyptian intellectuals. Some
agreed with Western views that the “awakening”
(sahwa) was a traditionalist means of avoiding
modernization, or coping with the anomie that
modernization brought.80 Certainly, the importance
of Islamic groups in this period related to Sadat’s
new political direction, his turn to the West, economic
changes, and unprecedented trip to Israel.
The first Islamist radical group to alarm the public
is now known as the Military Academy Group, because
of its April 1974 attempt to take over the Military
Academy in Heliopolis and then assassinate President
Sadat. Established in 1971 and led by a Palestinian, Salah

57
Siriyya, who held a doctorate in education and was a
former member of the Hizb al-Tahrir movement (a
pan-Muslim Caliphal movement set up by Palestinian
jurist, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani). Siriyya was a triple exile
(from Palestine, Jordan in 1970, and Iraq).81 Guards at
the Military Academy fired on and captured Siriyya’s
group; he was executed by hanging in 1976. Egyptian
authorities blamed the plot on Libya, unwilling at the
time to admit the presence of indigenous militants.82
Egyptian authorities labeled the second group
(which actually used as a name for itself, Jama`at al-
Muslimun) Takfir wa-l-Higra (Flight and Repentence,
or TWH), the words “takfir” referring to the practice
of excommunicating Muslims, and the “hijra” was the
Prophet’s exodus from Mecca to Medina.83 With this
title, Egyptian authorities highlighted the extremism
and eccentricity of the group in its vehement rejection
of Egyptian society, which it believed was as barbarous
as the world before Islam (jahiliyya) and should
be avoided, therefore it “seceded” to safe-houses
and secret places to prepare for overthrowing the
government and society. TWH represented one of the
first jihadi groups along bin Ladin’s model; similar to
the `Utaybi movement in Saudi Arabia which took over
the Grand Mosque in 1979. Members who attempted
or wished to leave TWH were threatened with death
as apostates. That meant some members were easily
manipulated by the Egyptian security services, which
may have committed or instigated many of the group’s
crimes.84 A more fully explained account of Egyptian
government agents provacateurs remains to be told.
What is important is that such tactics were useful to
the regime.
Some of the only data on the sociological profile of
the TWH members and those of the Military Academy

58
Group were collected and analyzed by sociologist
Saad Eddin Ibrahim85 who, at the time, described
these groups as a manifestations of social anomie and
frustration, but far from the only expression of increased
religiosity, as there were also moderate or apolitical
groups, and Sufi organizations also gaining adherents
then. Both groups, TWH and MI, were led by elder,
more experienced and charismatic individuals than the
membership, which, at the time, came from the petit
bourgeoisie, or were migrants to urban areas. Shukri
Mustafa, leader of TWH, was radicalized while in
prison, where he first recruited members for his group.
TWH operated secretly, yet authorities were alerted to
its presence early on, not least thanks to mysterious
disappearances of young women who simply vanished
from their communities, as they moved with their men
to safe-houses and rural locations. TWH kidnapped a
former Minister of Awqaf (Religious Endowments),
held him for ransom, and then killed him, thereby
bringing the wrath of the authorities down on the
group. Court transcripts indicate the members’ firm
commitment to the cause of jihad.86 Mustafa was
executed, 36 TWH members were imprisoned, but
more than 100 members were again arrested in 1982,
demonstrating the survival of the group. Under the
name al-Shawqiyin, TWH operated in Fayyum in the
1980s.87 However, the Muslim Brotherhood rejected
the violence and radicalism of the Military Academy
grouping, the TWH, as well as that of other emerging
groups, the Jama`at Jihad Islami, and the Jama`at
Islamiyya (in Egypt, where the letter ‘j’ is pronounced
as a ‘g,’ most references are to Gama`at Gihad Islam
and the Gama`at Islamiyya).
The Jama`at Jihad Islami, known as the Jihad
(Holy War) group, (or Egyptian Islamic Jihad, EIJ,

59
to distinguish it from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad)
adopted a revolutionary path to systemic change.
A more amorphous group, the Jama`at al-Islamiyya
(Islamic Groups) had evolved outside of the student
associations formed in Sadat’s era into at least
three militant groupings, one, a salafi movement at
Alexandria University, the second, found in Cairo
University as well as Alexandria University, favored
the Muslim Brotherhood, and some of its members
left it and joined the Brotherhood; and a third set of
groups were centered in universities and colleges in
Upper Egypt. These had rejected the nonviolent stance
of the Muslim Brotherhood in favor of the activism
of the EIJ.88 The Jihad was also at first two different
organizations, one founded by Muhammad `Abd al-
Salam Faraj and the other established by Muhammad
Salim al-Rahal, a student of al-Azhar from Jordan,
with some members joining in from organizations
such as Shabab Muhammad. When Rahal was expelled
from Egypt, leadership was transferred to a young
economics graduate of Cairo University, Kamal al-
Sayid Habib. The merging of these two groups came
about when Habib was introduced to Faraj by Tariq al-
Zumur whose brother-in law, `Abbud `Abd al-Latif al-
Zumur (a major in army intelligence), was the strategist
of the Faraj group. Al-Zumur urged the overthrow of
the Egyptian government, and that the group should
establish an Islamic caliphate to replace it.
It is sometimes suggested that the radical Islamists
have a very limited program, and unclearly delineated
tasks and strategy. EIJ had a well-defined structure
and goals. It was governed by a majlis al-shura (council
of consultation) with subcommittees for preparation,
propaganda, and finances. The EIJ wanted to establish a
state with a council of `ulama (clerics). Military tarbiyya

60
(training) was required and thorough. A planned take-
over of the government would actually mimic the 1952
revolution by seizing the Radio and Television building
as had occurred in 1952. Tarbiyya included first aid,
knowledge of topography, vehicle training, defense,
and physical exercises at stage one. Then at stage two,
students learned techniques of attacks and ambushes
and securing of strategically crucial sites. At the third
stage, and under the supervision of Nabil al-Maghrabi,
the use of weapons and explosives were taught, and
simulations planned and executed.89
First Lieutenant Khalid al-Islambuli devised a plan
to assassinate Sadat after a political crackdown in
1981. His younger brother, Muhammad al-Islambuli,
active in Assiut in Upper Egypt, had been arrested.
That same brother later led a branch of Maktab al-
Khidmat (bin Ladin’s organization) in Peshawar and
allegedly had links with Chechen militancy.90 The EIJ
plan was to achieve a state collapse, not merely Sadat’s
assassination. Some members disputed this plan, for
instance, Abbud al-Zumur thought the organization
needed more time before it could lead a popular
revolution.91 Al-Islambuli, with a relatively small
number of cohorts, killed the president at a military
review, shooting into the stands and crying out, “I have
killed Pharoah.” Al-Islambuli’s assassination of Sadat
on October 6, 1981, shocked Egyptians, and brought the
group global recognition, but EIJ’s revolutionary aims
failed. Sadat’s assassination was followed by nearly a
month of fighting in various locations in Upper Egypt.
Ultimately, this action and later violence resulted in EIJ
operatives’ flight from Egypt to escape the execution
and trials of its leaders and membership.
With Sadat’s assassination, the government
reimposed the so-called Emergency Law, Law No.

61
162, dating back to 1958 which had been in place since
1967 except for a brief period of 18 months from 1980.
Under the law, constitutional rights are suspended
(though the measures have been challenged),
nongovernmental political activities (including
meetings and demonstrations) are tightly limited,
and detention without charges or trials is allowed.
Currently, about 17,000 persons are under detention,
and perhaps 30,000 political prisoners held under
the law. As was explained above, the law allows for
a different type of trial in special courts. The law has
also allowed for torture according to the international
bodies monitoring such abuses like Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International.

Islamist Methodological Arguments.

The “jihad groups” (TWH, the Military Academy

group, the Jama`at al-Islamiyya, and Egyptian Islamic
Jihad) shared militance and their treatment of jihad
as the most important activity for Muslims, indeed,
a sixth pillar of Islam, as urged by the author of The
Missing Duty (Jihad: al-Farida al-gha’iba), Muhammad
`Abd al-Salam Faraj.92 There were also differences
between them. Faraj critiqued the TWH and JI groups
in his treatise. Jad al-Haqq, the Shaykh al-Azhar,
rebutted Faraj, articulating the state’s response to
the extremists. The Shaykh al-Azhar holds the most
important religious office in Egypt as the spokesman
for al-Azhar University, and its school system.
Faraj emphasized that active jihad is required
of believers, thus TWH’s hijra from barbarian, non-
Islamic (jahili) society and initial reluctance to take
up jihad were incorrect. In the same vein, the Jama`at
Islamiyya’s use of da`wa to create a mass base, while

62
postponing jihad is also incorrect; it is improper to
substitute “populism for jihad.” He also takes up the
issue of enmity to Israel and its policies by arguing that
since the nearest enemy is the Egyptian government,
not the Israelis, it should be overcome first. Only under
true Muslims would Jerusalem be liberated, so the false
Muslim rulers must be overthrown, and liberation will
follow. This argument likewise distinguishes the EIJ
from the Muslim Brotherhood on the same point.
Jad al-Haqq’s counterargument was that the
Qur’an contains verses limiting jihad, pointing to the
propriety of jihad “by the heart,” and “the tongue” in
place of jihad “by the sword.” He argued that the ruler
(like Sadat) could not be an apostate, because the true
definition of an apostate is one who rejects all of the
shari’ah (Islamic law), not just any part of it.93
Faraj attacked al-Haqq’s refutal, explaining that
the Qur’anic Sword Verses (these are the verses that
advocate jihad) have abrogated all other verses and are
as obligatory as fasting.94 Faraj claimed that the Egyptian
authorities are agents of imperialism. Moreover, they
had made promises to rule according to shari`ah,
but did not. The argument for the rule of shari`ah, in
place of man-made civil laws, is an important Islamist
theme; al-Islambuli stated that he assassinated Sadat
because the shari`a was not applied, and to protest the
peace treaty with Israel and unjustified 1981 arrests
of the `ulama.95 Islamists also stressed the corruption
(fasad) in the Egyptian government, embezzlement and
bribery, and its encouragement of the physical display
of women (tabarruj al-nisa’).96

RADICALS AND MODERATES

At certain periods during the 1980s, the radical

and violent Islamist groups receded from the news,

63
as Islamist moderates made gains with their strength
in some professional syndicates, in the national
university system, and in community and private
sector endeavors. These efforts continued in the 1990s,
i.e., with the lawyers’ syndicate. Under lawyer Sayf
al-Banna (son of Hasan al-Banna), the Islamic Trend
(including more Islamists than simply the Brotherhood)
did very well in the 1992 elections of that organization,
thanks to organized campaigning, paying overdue
membership fees of some 3,000 members (who could
then vote), utilizing volunteers from the Islamic Law
Committees, and, most importantly, presenting a
unified front.97 As a result, the Trend won 16 out of 24
seats in these elections.
The government also had to respond to militant
and moderate attacks on the “culture” it promoted in
Egypt. Because Islamists posited their ideas as the “true
Islam,” ordinary Egyptians were drawn into these
arguments about what should be worn, read, heard,
or passed into law. As one of its strategies against the
Islamist militants (and sometimes the moderates as
well), the Egyptian government trumpeted its own neo-
conservative message through the media—censorship
and encouragement of certain traditional Muslim
themes and attitudes. Examples of such symbolic
actions include banning belly-dancing, a uniquely
Egyptian form of entertainment, from television when
it had been allowed for many years; cutting scenes in
films or plays; and the “withdrawal from circulation”
of hundreds of books, whether because their titles refer
to Islam or something suggestive or to Saudi Arabia,
Palestine, or contemporary Egypt, or because they
actually contained religiously controversial material.
Repression in universities, both public and private
institutions, was achieved through censorship, a police

64
presence on campus, direct warnings issued to students
and parents, and political appointees as administrators
who policed their faculty.98 This repression worked in
two ways, to rein in Islamists, but also to censor leftist
or secularist views and ideas considered aggravating
to Islamists, which might then generate an anti-
government protest. A wild and violent protest had
taken place over a book that was published decades
earlier by a Syrian author, Haydar al-Haydar.
Paradoxically, by these actions the government
encouraged popular Islamic revivalism, while at the
same time attempting to diminish the uniqueness of
activist Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood. This
government’s strategy against radicalism has made
it impossible for it to democratize without including
moderates who have played by its rules, and thus
the overall presence of political Islam has been
strengthened. Nearly all political parties, including the
dominant NDP, give some lip service to Islamic ideals,
due to their resurgent popularity in Egypt. Successful
alliances of the Muslim Brotherhood with other groups
gained them seats in Parliament in the 1980s, first with
the Wafd and then with the Socialist Labor Party.
In the 1980s, the “legal” or official opposition in
Egypt was comprised of the New Wafd, the Socialist
Labor Party, the Nationalist Unionist Progressive
Party, the Liberal Party, and the Umma Party. The
Muslim Brotherhood, the largest group opposed to the
regime’s policies, was not a legal party. The four official
opposition parties were weak. Major electoral changes
would be requested to strengthen them. The intent
of having an opposition at all was that it should be
small and unable to forge alliances that would present
any meaningful challenge to the “mother party,” the
NDP. The NDP still held 95 percent of the seats in

65
1999. By 2005, ever more elaborate rules governing
the establishment or campaigning of political parties
excluded the Brotherhood, and continued to constrain
the development of a vigorous opposition.
Islamic community endeavors such as clinics, new
private schools, charitable associations, and Islamic
teaching circles increased in the 1980s and 1990s.
Islamist-owned supermarkets and shoe and clothing
stores opened, as well as Islamic investment companies,
like Al-Sharif (est. 1978), the Badr company (est. 1980),
al-Rayan in 1982, followed by al-Huda and al-Sa`d
the next year, and al-Hilal in 1986,99 each promising
higher rates of return than government banks. In 1988
there were more than 100 of such companies, and the
assets of the 50 larger companies were estimated at $3
billion.100 In November 1988, the government closed
the al-Rayan company, and panic set in as the body
of the al-Rayan chief executive officer was discovered,
and his widow left the country. The timing and manner
of the government’s intervention left many investors
penniless.101
During these years, President Mubarak’s strategy
was to contain the moderates and uproot the radicals.
While moderates were also arrested, imprisoned,
censored, and mistreated, they managed to mount
the first legal challenges to the constitutionality of the
regime’s actions, and tried to embarrass it through
hunger strikes, publicity, and other methods.
Meanwhile, the state security services arrested
militants, put them on trial, and tried to deny them
havens. Many members went to the Gulf, Afghanistan,
and later Albania and Chechnya. Key individuals like
Ayman Zawahiri joined forces with al-Qa’ida. The Gulf
War, in many ways, furthered EIJ’s aim to delegitimize
the Egyptian regime, when it suppressed popular

66
protests against Egypt’s participation in the coalition
with the West to fight Iraq.

A WAR WITH ISLAMISM

In a prolonged crisis of violence from the late

1980s to 1997, radical Islamists attempted or actually
did assassinate a Speaker of Parliament; Ministers
of the Interior; a Prime Minister; former head of the
Shura Council, Rif`at al-Mahjub; judges; and other
officials, as well as security service personnel and
police officers including Major General Ra’uf Khayrat,
Major General Ghabara, and Major General al-Shimi.
An assassination attempt on Mubarak took place while
he was in Ethiopia. Innocent bystanders were hurt and
killed in radical Islamist attacks and counter raids. An
Islamist assassinated secularist writer, Farag Foda, and
even the Nobel laureate in literature, elderly Naguib
Mahfouz, was attacked by a young man who said he
had heard a preacher speaking on the evils of Mahfouz’
work.102 Officials and foreigners employed guards for
their homes. Violent radical Islamists targeted tourists
as another means of destabilizing the government,
carrying out major attacks that discouraged that sector.
For some time, Islamists controlled an entire area of
Cairo, the poverty-stricken neighborhood of Imbaba
on the western side of the Nile. The government felt
impelled to reconquer the area.
In Upper Egypt during this low-grade civil war,
militant Islamists attacked police officers and their
families, police stations, travelers on trains, and Copts
(Egyptian Christians) who had been targets ever since
the late 1970s. This Islamist movement of the south, as
mentioned earlier, took up the causes of neglect and
underdevelopment; poverty was more sharply felt

67
there. When the government in the late 1980s appointed
new imams and preachers in the local mosques of the
Sa`id, it also diverted zakat donations into government
banks, depleting local charitable services. The
government additionally attacked and mistreated those
involved in Islamic development associations, as these
were part of the Jama`at al-Islamiyya (its charitable
arm), and in fact, such attacks sparked a civil war in
Mallawi in al-Minya in 1994-95.103
With the first bombing of the World Trade Center
in Manhattan in 1993 which brought to light Shaykh
`Umar `abd al-Rahman, a spiritual leader of the Islamist
Jihad group, the specter of Egyptian Islamism and an
international plot burst loudly into the world press.
`Abd al-Rahman’s preaching base had once been in the
Fayyum. Due to his actions on behalf of the Muslim
Brothers, he had lost his teaching position at al-Azhar
University. He was put on trial following Sadat’s
assassination, found innocent, and released from jail
in 1983.104 Briefly arrested again in 1989, he made the
pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia and then traveled to the
Sudan and from there to the United States where he
preached against the secularist Egyptian government
in the al-Salam mosque in Jersey City and the al-
Badr mosque in Brooklyn. The Egyptian government
and court system had difficulty branding him as a
convenient villain because his spiritual inspiration
to those involved in terrorism was no more than the
`ulama’s time-honored role of “commanding the good
and denying the evil,” the hisba.105

The Brotherhood and the Government.

The Jama`at al-Islamiyya continued to garner

support from those hoping for radical change and

68
opposed participation in the 1987 elections, but
the Muslim Brotherhood expanded its role in these
elections via an alliance with the Labor Party, and its
publication, al-Sha`b. Just prior to the election, hundreds
of people who supported the Muslim Brotherhood
were arrested, and there was significant interference
with voters during the election. Despite this, the group
obtained 36 parliamentary seats, allowing them more of
a presence in Parliament. They also obtained far more
influence in the professional syndicates in these years,
which the government sought to reverse via a new
Law for the Guarantees of Democracy in Professional
Associations.106
The Egyptian government combined its attacks on
the radical Islamists with an intensified onslaught on
the moderate Muslim Brotherhood. This appears to
have been because the regime truly feared a legitimate
political challenge by this group in this period. In 1992,
the Sha`b newspaper, then representing the Islamic
Alliance composed of the Socialist Labor Party and
the Muslim Brotherhood, protested the election fraud
in which the NDP claimed to have won 50 slates,
that were actually won by the Alliance, and up to 27
independent seats.107

OTHER TYPES OF REPRESSION

The experience of political repression has also

limited democratization. As noted, prior to the 1995
elections, the police arrested dozens of Brotherhood
candidates, as well as certain senior members. They
closed Brotherhood headquarters and handed over their
legal jurisdiction to a military court citing the emergency
laws. The elections were violent; 40 people were killed,
and non-Islamist elements of the opposition spoke

69
out against the government’s tactics and sentences
handed down to the Brothers.108 Saad Eddin Ibrahim
and other political activists tried repeatedly to address
repressive government practices regarding elections,
and argued for the judiciary to oversee the elections.
Judicial oversight was first implemented in the two-
stage elections that took place in the fall of 2000. The
judiciary had to fight to carry out their mandate and
protested the government’s efforts to punish judges in
the spring of 2006.
Islamist leader, `Adil Husayn, his nephew Magdi
Ahmad Husayn, and a cartoonist for their newspaper,
al-Sha`b, were arrested and given a prison sentence for
criticizing Minister of Agriculture Youssef Wali. The
Court of Cassation overturned the sentence, and they
were able to bring the matter to the Constitutional
Court. This was a breakthrough in that it allowed for
other constitutional challenges to government actions.
The government soon accused the Brotherhood
of launching a campaign against Walima li-A`shab
al-Bahr, the book by Syrian author Haydar Haydar,
mentioned earlier, which Islamists had suddenly
discovered (though it was published in the 1960s) and
deemed “atheistic” in tone. The furor over the book
led to student demonstrations and deaths in May
2000. The Political Parties Committee officially froze
the Labor Party and closed the al-Sha`b newspaper,109
thereby canceling out the fruits of the legal victory
described above. Journalists engaged in hunger strikes
in protest.
A further dimension of the conflicts between
government and Islamists and Islamists and
secularists spilled into the legal and intellectual
spheres. The government has regularly censored the
Muslim Brotherhood, in each case forcing cessation

70
of its publications, al-Da`wa, then Liwa al-Islam, and
then al-Sha`b. In return, Islamist critics (and not only
Brothers) attacked many Egyptian intellectuals on
the basis of their statements, writings, or even course
materials, e.g., Hasan Hanafi, Nasr Abu Zayd, Nawal
al-Saadawi, and Samia Mehrez. Professor Abu Zayd’s
marriage was dissolved in a third party action because
Abu Zayd’s ideas were deemed “beyond the bounds of
Islam,” and the claim was made that as an apostate, he
was illegally wed to his Muslim wife. The couple was
forced into exile in Europe. The President supported
a legal change, so that when Islamists attempted the
same tactic against Nawal al-Saadawi, a well-known
physician turned feminist activist, and declared her
“outside the bounds of Islam” using the pretext of an
interview in which she pointed to the pre-Islamic origin
of one custom of the hajj, they were unsuccessful in two
efforts to divorce her from her husband by third party
action. Samia Mehrez, a professor at the American
University in Cairo, was attacked in the press for using
an allegedly indecent Moroccan novel in her literature
course. The university tried to compel her to change
her syllabus; calls were issued to expel her from the
country, and Parliament debated the book.
The Brotherhood also enhanced its political appeal
by condemning the attacks committed by the violent
political groups. They put forth and explained revisions
to their original ideological stance, such as their support
of pluralism and of political parties themselves, since
Hasan al-Banna had opposed hizbiyya (partisanship
and the promotion of parties).110 They declared
Coptic Christians to be full citizens, not dhimma with
diminished rights, which contrasted with the militant
JI and other groups’ attacks on Copts.

71
 Their growing appeal threatened the regime. At
the beginning of 1995, 82 Brothers were arrested and
accused of plotting a coup and referred to military
tribunals. Then following the attempt on Mubarak’s
life in Ethiopia in June 1995, there were further arrests.
More than a thousand Brothers were arrested in 1995
and 1996. The 1995 arrests were meant to discourage
the Brothers in the elections, which turned out to be
extremely violent, and of the 150 Brethren candidates,
only one was elected to Parliament. These attacks and
detentions, coupled with differences between younger
and older members (such as on the details of the role
of Copts in the ideal Muslim society envisioned by the
Brothers) resulted in a breakaway party, the Wasat,
under Abu al-Ela Madi and others in 1996.
Fearing victory at the hands of Brotherhood
candidates, the government arrested hundreds of
students just prior to student elections in 1998. The
government continued a strong media campaign that
began in 1995, accusing the organization of terrorism,
a claim it has rather successfully revived more recently
in the guise of the GWOT. However, despite the
continued media campaign, since 2000 the government
has released many Brothers from prison. Their
imprisonment actually added to their popularity, as a
pattern was easily discernable—hold elections, arrest
Muslim Brethren. This helped some of the released
individuals in the next round of elections in 2005. The
last of the original Brotherhood leadership died in 2002
and 2004, which has resulted in less authoritarianism
within the organization, as evidenced by the election
(rather than appointment) of the next General Guide,
Muhammad Mehdi Akef.111

72
CONTAINING RADICAL VIOLENCE

The Brotherhood were not aiming to overthrow the

government, but to participate in it. Yet in the 1990s,
the radical Jama`at al-Islamiyya drew attention to
Egypt with many attacks on Egyptian authorities and
tourists. The attacks on tourists were meant to hurt the
economy. Among many such attacks were those on a
Greek tourist group in Giza believed to be Israelis, and
in October 1997, the firebombing of a bus filled with
tourists parked just outside the Egyptian Museum by
Islamists previously sentenced for violence, who had
escaped confinement in a mental institution. Worst
of all was a full-scale attack on a group of European
tourists at the temple of Hatshepsut at Dair al-Bahri,
in the Valley of the Queens in Luxor at the end of that
year. Millions of dollars in tourist revenues were lost,
and many small businesses involving the tourist trade
were impacted. Most observers believed, or hoped, that
the public was revolted by the violence of the extreme
Islamists, who had threatened their income.
These highly publicized incidents were accompan-
ied by less-reported attacks on police and Egyptian
Christians in villages in Upper Egypt, and on
passengers on the train line bound for that area.
Attacks on Copts continued to be a serious matter.
On January 2, 2000, there was violence in the village
of Kosheh, leaving 20 Christians and 1 Muslim dead.
The government condemned the official reports on this
incident, preferring to take an ostrich approach, since
sectarian problems in Upper Egypt appeared difficult
to eradicate, and because claims of sectarian violence
were damaging to the country’s human rights record.
The Mubarak government hoped to stamp out
militant Islam as well as its moderate opponents,

73
the Brotherhood, without insulting increasingly
heightened Islamic sensibilities. Decrees banned the
niqab (the Islamist face veil) in public schools or settings,
and required that girls who wore the hijab should have
parental permission. Many of these orders were ignored.
Censorship over various publications continued as a
means of forestalling Islamist criticism. At the same
time, the government never really engaged in an open
dialogue with the Islamists. The regime continued to
treat the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wasat Party, a
newer organization formed from breakaway Brethren
along with some Copts, as illegal groups.

Truce.

After the violence of the attacks in Luxor, the

government’s security forces opened a full-scale attack
on the Jama`at al-Islamiyya and what remained of EIJ.
Eventually a truce was achieved, which opened the
door for self-criticism and revisionism on the part of
the EIJ and the Jama‛at. Numerous explanations have
been given for their members’ volte de face. My sense
is that these Islamists, fearing the loss of support by
the Muslim masses, had gone through a sincerely
introspective phase in which they realized that as a
vanguard, they were too far from the aspirations and
views of ordinary Muslims who could suffer as a result
of their actions. Further, the Egyptian state’s repressive
capacity was quite strong. The Luxor incident truly
threatened the regime by demonstrating its inability to
contain the Islamist threat and the undermining of the
tourist sector, hence the response, in terms of arrests,
torture, detentions, and so on, were intended to be
unbearable for the radicals, and they simply had to
reconsider their way forward. Many believed the truce

74
to be just about a permanent one, so the speculation was
that such truces could provide a solution to Islamist-
state conflicts elsewhere in the region. Then the ground
was shaken by the events of 9/11 in the United States.
Since then, some of these groups’ members have been
critical of their own commitment to activist jihad. As
we might expect, these expressions of remorse or self-
criticism were denied and denounced by Ayman al-
Zawahiri, as the treason of the qa’idin, those who sit on
the sidelines.

AL-QA’IDA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH EGYPTIAN

ISLAMIST MILITANTS

Whether as a result of repression at home or the

growth of Islamic militancy on a regional basis, a
strong connection between radical Egyptian Islamism
and the al-Qa’ida group emerged.112 These connections
predated 9/11. Of at least 29 Egyptians connected
with the al-Jihad group like Ayman Rabi` al-Zawahiri;
or the Jama`at al-Islamiyya, like Rifa`i Ahmed Taha;
and others like Mustafa Hamzah, many had fought in
Afghanistan and the Balkans. Some of these “Afghan
Arabs” later found refuge in the United Kingdom,
Germany, or Pakistan. Al-Qa’ida benefited greatly from
al-Zawahiri, who has served as theorist and strategist,
and others like Muhammad `Atif who organized the
9/11 attacks. They, in turn, gained a financial sponsor
in bin Ladin and a field for operations.
The Jama`at al-Islamiyya agreed to nonviolence
following the Luxor attack. Consequently, 8,000
Jama`at prisoners were released. A section of EIJ swore
to continue jihad,113 but the major force of the group also
accepted the truce. The EIJ and the JI were essentially
local jihadists, some of whom have been dubbed global

75
jihadists. We need to remember that:
• Every movement or nation-state can define
local, regional, and international goals, and
vacillate from one to the other. Thus al-Qa’ida
had local goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan and
the EIJ and JI aimed to continue jihad in Egypt,
but each could and did inspire jihad elsewhere.
• The now local, now global status of Islamism is a
feature of contemporary life, reflected in travel,
Internet Islamist activities, text messaging,
and other technologies, but local goals appear
preeminent.
• We should deduce from the history of militant
Islamism that the EIJ, more moderate Islamist
organizations, and new small militant Islamist
groups are affected and aggravated by the
perceived Western crusade on the Muslim
world.

Zawahiri.

Ayman al-Zawahiri personified a nexus of al-Qa’ida

and Egyptian Islamism. His life shows that the Islamist
tendency does not solely emerge from sha`bi (popular)
neighborhoods or from economic desperation or social
anomie. Islamist radicalism had spread to Egypt’s
professional classes. His forbears, unlike Usama bin
Ladin’s father, were privileged on both the Azzam and
Zawahiri sides of his family, spelling out to Egyptians
that the “enemy is within,”114 or more disturbingly,
giving them a sense that men like Zawahiri are not
really the enemy.115
Zawahiri’s book, Knights under the Prophet’s Banner,
was serialized in the London-based Arabic newspaper,

76
al-Sharq al-Awsat and read all over the Arab world. He
paints himself as one who educates Muslim youth to
recognize the enemies of Islam. His appeal to jihad was
very attractive to thousands of young men in prisons.
He recommended a “by any means necessary” strategy,
pointing to the damage that even small numbers of
actors can exact and suggested targeting the United
Nations, multinational corporations, the media, and
international relief groups because these are covers for
other operations, according to him, and are indicators
of Arab and Muslim obeisance to the West. Like al-
Qa’ida and many other groups, he also linked Palestine
and then Iraq to the struggle.116 They oppose groups
like the Muslim Brotherhood, and more recently
Hamas, for engaging in the electoral process. In 2007,
al-Zawahiri warned Hamas against accepting any
deal with Mahmud Abbas and Fatah, seeing in recent
events the efforts of the West to “divide and conquer”
Muslims in every country.
Islamist attorney Montassir al-Zayat, who himself
defended other Islamist prisoners, writes about al-
Zawahiri in Ayman al-Zawahiri As I Knew Him,117
suggesting that it was the Zawahiri’s vicious torture by
Egyptian officials that set him onto a path of no return.118
In other words, al-Zayat points to state repression as
an agent in the emergence of militant Islam’s violence.
After 9/11, Egyptian authorities hoped that the
truce would hold in the country, and figures like al-
Zawahiri were of no immediate danger. However, new
violence suggests that Islamist radical violence might
be a sporadic, and seemingly an unpreventable feature
of the landscape, thus casting a pessimistic light on the
much-needed reforms of governance and political life
in Egypt.

77
REEMEGENCE OF JIHAD IN EGYPT?

The string of violent incidents since 2003 included

suicide attacks and car and truck bombs in the Sinai
and Egypt proper. Bedouin radicalism was a new
theme that piqued media interest, as this advances the
notion that violent tactics are chiefly wielded by the
alienated.119 Also novel was the advent of women’s
militant activism.
In September 2003, Egyptian police nabbed 23
suspected Islamist militants who intended to carry out
attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Nineteen were Egyptians,
but there were also three from Bangladesh, a Turk,
a Malaysian, and an Indonesian. All had studied at
Al-Azhar. In October 2004, Zawahiri issued a call for
jihad (outside of Iraq) by audiotape. Then, on October
7, 2004, at the anniversary of the Ramadan War of 1973
(and close to the October 6 anniversary of President
Sadat’s assassination),120 an Isuzu truck fitted with a
car bomb exploded at the Taba Hilton, collapsing a
part of the structure. Two other bombs were set off at
a beachside campsite at Ras Shitan, killing 34 people.
Israeli vacationers as well as Egyptians enjoyed this
area, but its proximity to Israel signaled Israelis as a
main target. A Peugeot fitted with a bomb was meant
to explode at the Nuwayba Hilton where a group of
Egyptian VIPs were vacationing, but instead blew up
prematurely. Many more would have been killed if the
Isuzu had been parked near the supporting wall, and
if the Nuwayba attack had succeeded. A group called
Jama`at al-Islamiyya al-`Alamiyya (World Islamic
Group) claimed responsibility. Some linked the blasts
to al-Zawahiri’s audiotape, raising fears that al-Qa’ida
could coordinate new attacks. Others tried to connect the
blasts to Palestinian terrorism because of the popularity

78
of the northern Sinai coast with vacationing Israelis.
Some Israeli sources initially stressed al-Qa’ida’s
planning and participation; arguing that the operation
had taken 18-24 months of planning, that one of the
vehicles used had been traced to Greater Cairo, and
that Mubarak was withholding critique of al-Qa’ida in
these attacks.121 After the attacks, 12,000 Israeli tourists
in the Sinai during the Sukkot holidays fled. Then the
Brigades of `Abdullah `Azzam, a heretofore unknown
al-Qa’ida affiliate group, claimed responsibility.122
Egyptian authorities attempted to disassociate the
attacks from al-Qa’ida and others in mainland Egypt,
blaming the Bedouin of the Sinai, while assuring the
public that this was an isolated event.
Soon after the October 2004 attack, Abu al-`Abbas
al-`A’edhi, a leader of al-Qa’ida fi Jazirat al-`Arabiyya
(Al-Qa’ida on the Arabian Peninsula), web-posted
“From Riyadh/East to Sinai,” a very significant
document proclaiming a new jihad in Egypt that was to
parallel attacks in Saudi Arabia.123 This pronouncement
underscored other statements made by al-Qa’ida
strategists that their struggle would continue until they
achieved victory in Iraq and spread into the Levant.
Soon another group, the Mujahidin of Egypt, also
claimed responsibility for the Sinai attack.
Attention focused on Bedouin radicalism, which
could have emerged from the disaffection of the
Bedouin for mainland Egyptian authorities, as well
as their precarious economic situation. It might be
difficult, however, to understand why Bedouin,
especially in the north, would attack the tourist sector,
which provides the only source of income outside of
fishing and smuggling.
The Bedouin report extremely intense pressures on
their value system, as their centuries-old pastoral way

79
of life has become a casualty of development. While this
is true of other areas in the Middle East, the Bedouin of
the Sinai are justifiably cynical about the process. As one
tribal leader remarked years earlier when considering
whether a discussion about smuggling included
in a book could create any trouble: “And anyway,
who would care? America—despite the movies [that
American film producers shot here], they don’t care
about us. And if we weren’t cheap labor or better than
the [topographical] maps, neither the Egyptians nor
the Israelis would care about us either.”124
The encroachments of the Israeli occupation and
Egyptian re-extension of authority, as well as the influx
of tourists in the Sinai produced many unanticipated
changes in these tribal groups. One such change is the
growth of the Islamic Movement—and this is true for
other regions where Bedouin are prevalent as well—
in Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf nations, the Negev, and in
Egypt’s northern coastal area.
In the wake of the Taba bombings, the police and
security services detained up to 5,000 suspects. The
detentions and poor treatment sparked demonstrations
which included family members of the detained in the
Egyptian city of al-Arish.125
Then a few incidents occurred in the Egyptian
capital. On March 29, 2005, an Egyptian man stabbed
two Hungarian tourists who were seen kissing each
other near the al-Husayn mosque in Cairo. Authorities
described the assailant as “mentally unstable” and
“unemployed,” portraying this as an isolated incident.
On April 7, 2005, a suicide bombing in the Khan al-
Khalili bazaar killed three tourists and wounded 18
other people. Egyptian authorities initially announced
that the bomber, Hassan Rafa`at Bashandi, acted alone,
but a claim was later made by a heretofore unknown

80
Islamist organization, and the authorities sought
the killer’s accomplices,126 arresting Gamal Ahmad
`Abd al-`Al, Ashraf Sa`id Yusif, and another suspect
and cousin of Ashraf’s who died in police custody.
Egyptian authorities claim that Ihab Yousri Yasin (aka
Ihab Yousri Mohammad of Saft) learned of these arrests
shortly before carrying out his own attack in Cairo. It
seems likely that security forces were pursuing him
when he was either blown up or blew himself up by
launching himself from the bridge behind the Egyptian
Museum, a major tourist attraction, onto `Abd al-
Mun`im Riyadh square on April 30. The Ministry of the
Interior reported that Yasin jumped from the bridge
and subsequently detonated a bomb.127 An Israeli
couple, an Italian woman, a Swedish man, and three
Egyptians were injured by what authorities said was a
primitive type of bomb filled with nails.128 The oddity
of his method—why jump from the bridge at all—is
striking. More to the point, in a different report some
eyewitnesses described a heavy object falling from
the bridge onto a man walking near them, who was
decapitated by the explosion.129
Later that same day, Yasin’s sister, Nagat, and
his fiancée, Iman Khamis, both in their 20s and fully
veiled, reportedly opened fire on a tourist bus in the
Sayyida `A’isha neighborhood. Sources again provide
conflicting stories. One must understand that the media
in Egypt are not free to report events like these in the
way that they might be in the United States. Some
reported that police fired on the women, killing one,
while others described one woman shooting the other,
and then wounded herself, dying later in hospital.130
However, some witnesses said that police fired on the
women.131 Two other Egyptians were hurt, but none
of the passengers on the bus. Some 226 individuals

81
were arrested in the extremists’ native villages and
in the Shubra neighborhood of Cairo.132 A scrap of
paper found in one woman’s purse said that “we will
continue to sacrifice our lives to let others live,”133—a
typical characterization of “defensive” jihad. Libya
subsequently extradited Yasin’s 17-year old brother,
Muhammad, to Egypt in connection with the April
attacks.134
A more detailed explanation of the Cairo incidents
was never put forth by the government, which may
have deemed the new theme of “revenge” in such
incidents to be sufficient. However, the next event in
the Sinai disrupted the tourist season for the year. On
July 23, Egypt’s national holiday that commemorates
the 1952 revolution, coordinated bomb blasts killed
65 people in Sharm al-Shaykh, a tourist sea resort
in the south Sinai popular with Europeans. 135 The
timing of the attacks was calculated to exert maximum
damage on tourists, though in fact, more Egyptians
than Westerners were killed. In the first attack,
militants planted a bomb in a suitcase in the parking
lot of the Ghazala Gardens hotel, then drove a truck
with a bomb hidden under vegetables into the hotel’s
reception area. When people fled the truck explosion,
the suitcase exploded. Meanwhile, another truck got
stuck in the Old Market area, so its drivers abandoned
the vehicle and detonated the bomb. The coordination
of the bombings and their timing (coming fairly soon
after the July 7, 2005 (7/7) attacks in London) led some
to speculate about international planning.136
The Sinai attacks were not over, however. On April
24, 2006, three bombs were set off in Dahab, a Sinai
resort further north favored by European and Israeli
wind-surfers (and some say, drug-users) killing 19
people. Dahab also employs or provides income to
many Bedouin who come down from the hill areas

82
to lead tours, fish, sell trinkets to tourists, or work in
the hotels, and therefore the attack had an impact on
the economic well-being of the Bedouin. While this
impact does not automatically absolve the Bedouin of
culpability, it does support the argument for external
(at least to the Bedouin) involvement.
Two days later, two suicide bombers targeted
a Multinational Force and Observer (MFO) base in
the northern Sinai, but only the suicide bombers
were killed. Eight months earlier, on August 15,
2005, a remote control bomb had injured two female
MFO soldiers. Egyptian authorities at first denied
a connection between the Sharm al-Shaykh attacks
and those in Dahab and the MFO incidents, but later
expanded on the idea that a new Bedouin terrorist cell
affiliated with al-Qa’ida had developed, aggravated by
the poor Sinai conditions and alienation of the Bedouin.
Within 2 years, 11 attacks were attributed to a group
that the Egyptian police called the Tawhid w-al-Jihad
group. Police killed the founder, Khalid al-Masa’id, a
dentist from al-Arish in 2005, then the group’s other
leader, Nasir Khamis al-Mallahi, a law graduate of
Palestinian background born in the Egyptian delta, on
May 9, 2006, in a shoot-out in the al-Arish area. Five
men surrendered after hiding in caves and dunes there
and subsequently were interrogated by the authorities.
Fifteen were put on trial, and three were given death
sentences. According to court statements, the two
principals had recruited others in the area of Shaykh
Zwayd, an impoverished part of the northern Sinai.

REVENGE OR UNDERDEVELOPMENT?

Egyptian officials disagreed that counterterrorist

campaigns could have further encouraged jihad, but
they, like others, do attribute certain attacks to “re-

83
venge.” “Revenge” is now as frequent an explanation as
the highly unsatisfying “insanity” which was offered in
the past. Officially, torture, incommunicado detentions,
and inadequate prison conditions in Egypt are denied
by the government, though they are documented
by groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty
International USA.137 Torture and imprisonment in
the late 1970s and 1980s led to further organizational
development in prisons themselves, and the spread
of “global jihad.” A Jihad leader from Minya of the
late 1980s, `Ali Muhammad `Ali, explained that the
security forces attacked members “who prevented
prayer services and pursued all of us without any
apparent cause” (fulfilling the ideas of defensive
jihad).138 Human Rights Watch has documented torture,
hostage taking, and abuse of detained Islamists’ family
members, including sexual abuse.139 While it is possible
that the emergence of several new “terror cells” since
2003 could be related to 1990’s “overkill,” the hiatus in
violence makes this unlikely. Further, it is not clear that
revenge motivations, which could explain the second
and third Sinai attacks, were connected with the Taba
blasts. Likewise, revenge could have played a role in
secondary attacks in Cairo in April 2005, but not in the
initial attacks (as in the Khan).
Other explanations of the new wave of violence
in Egypt have been propagated. One approach is
that new Islamist actors, unbound by any prior
arrangements with the regime, have emerged. Such
actors could be influenced by al-Qa’ida or global
jihadism. Alternatively, the new actors may actually
be or have some association with agents provacateurs
of the regime’s security services. Or these new actors
are emerging due to long-standing underdevelopment
combined with a need for revenge due to governmental
attacks directly on them. The lack of agreement on

84
the cause of the new activities is clearly evident from
the plethora of competing views expressed by key
nongovernmental political figures. Ayman Nour,
leader of the al-Ghad Party, argued that the violence
was the result of the “environment of oppression and
depression.”140 Mohammed Mehdi Akef, general guide
of the Muslim Brotherhood, condemned the attacks
and expressed concerns about political reform. Al-
Zayat, the Islamist lawyer who had known Zawahiri,
said that independently operating (or freelance) jihadis
are now emerging due to their sympathies with al-
Qa’ida, or the struggle in Iraq or Palestine.141 Muslim
Brotherhood leader `Isam al-`Aryan claimed Egypt had
reached a “boiling point” and that the involvement of
women (in April 2005) was an indicator of despair.142
Others suggested the April 30 attacks were simply acts
of revenge.143 An editorial in al-Quds al-`Arabi claimed
the country is “sick beyond cure,” and authorities
are “as usual, falsifying the facts” and misleading the
public while the jihadists re-emerge.144
Although Egyptians are accustomed to discrep-
ancies in such events and their media coverage, still
some found it bizarre that the two women had no
targets, or that there were so many versions of the two
Cairo attacks circulating. Inconsistencies in the Sinai
attacks also were noted.
During previous decades of low-level war with
radical Islamists, the Egyptian government (through
the official press) typically described isolated acts
of “lunatics” or “criminals,” rather than identifying
coordinated radical attacks, or linking them to radical
Islamism as with the 1997 attack on a bus near the
Egyptian Museum in which 10 tourists were killed
by Sabr Abu `Ulla. `Ulla had previously attacked and
killed tourists but was placed in a mental hospital and

85
then released. Authorities claimed he had escaped the
institute. Since new attacks tarnish the government’s
success rate in containing militant Islamism, a
continuing lack of clarity in official messages about
them is not surprising.

Other New Actors—Women.

Taking a step back to a regional perspective, 2005-

06 also saw the entry of more women into militant
actions in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Women
had not, until the incident above, engaged in violence
in Egypt, and their participation signaled something
ominous to the Arab public145 although women were
identified with all of the Islamist radical organizations,
and were often detained and even tortured.146
Principles inhibiting women from taking active part
in jihad go back to classical definitions of mujahidin:
they should be male, adult, and without debts or,
correspondingly, dependents, despite examples of
early activist women. However, such restrictions
were not in force during the time of the Prophet when
earlier traditions of Arabian women who engaged in
battle were still extant. For example, Nusayba bint
Ka`b, also known as Umm `Umara fought in the battle
of Uhud in 625 C.E.;147 `A’isha, the Prophet’s beloved
wife, directed the Battle of the Camel; and Zaynab bint
`Ali, the Prophet’s granddaughter, fought in the Battle
of Karbala (680 C.E.). Radical Islamists glorify these
early Arabian warrior women, and thereby break from
the traditional definitions of mujahidin to argue that
women (and children) should join men in responding
when jihad becomes an individual duty of Muslims.
Analysts have warned for some time that the “typical”
profile of the suicide bomber should not be restricted to

86
the young, desperate, uneducated, or male population.
Still, Egyptians found it shocking that women would
suddenly engage in such an operation.

AL-QA’DISM AND SECURITY

With the 2-year extension of the Emergency Laws

in April 2006, some see a conspiracy theory in which
the new violence bolstered the regime’s claim that the
extension was necessary. Information was withheld
regarding the Ta’ifa al-Mansura, (Victorious Sect), a
group of radicals from several areas of Cairo that was
planning to attack tourist sites and assassinate both
Muslim and Christian religious authorities. Somewhat
strange was a more complete disclosure of this group
and its activities released quite some time after their
arrest, finally in April at a time when it compounded
the threat factor posed by the Dahab bombings. This
leads us to questions about these and the earlier Sinai
bombings. If the current strife is caused by disaffected
Bedouin and Egyptian-born Palestinians wanting to
emulate al-Qa’ida, then what would be the reason
for the emergence of other groups like the Ta’ifa al-
Mansura or the Tala`i al-Fath (another jihadist group
operative since 2003, and thought to be an offshoot of
Egyptian Islamic Jihad whose members were arrested
in September 2005) or the other attacks in Cairo in 2005?
Is there, rather, something we can call al-Qa’idism—
not global, but local, and not containable?
The Ta’ifa al-Mansura attackers have the same
name as an Iraqi Sunni group (Jaysh Ta’ifa al-Mansura)
that launched mortar attacks near the Kadhimiyya
mosque in Baghdad in August 2005. The government
detained this group of 22 young men for 50 to 90 days
before announcing their capture. They came mainly

87
from al-Zawya al-Hamra and Tora, which is a poorer
industrial area near Ma`adi to the south of Cairo.
Ahmad Muhammad Ali Gabr, a 26-year-old literature
student in the Faculty of Arts and Abu Bakr al-Masri,
also 26 years old and a preacher, led the group. The
government announced that the group had obtained
information about explosives and poisons from the
Internet and had planned attacks on tourists, a gas
pipeline on the Cairo ring road, and against Muslim
and Christian religious leaders.148

Moderates: The Greater Enemy?

Just days after the April 2005 incidents mentioned

above, police clashed with pro-Brotherhood
demonstrators in Fayyum, Mansura, and Zagazig.
Demonstrations were also held in Alexandria, the
Delta, and Cairo to protest parliamentary efforts to
amend a constitutional reform to election procedures
that would directly impact the Brotherhood’s efforts to
obtain votes. They condemned the state-owned media
and called for an end to the Emergency Law, and for
reform. Observers believe that the Brotherhood might
secure up to 30 to 35 percent of parliamentary seats in
a free and fair election.
These efforts by moderate Islamists to cash in on the
energy for democratization came up against the GWOT
policies that now enhance the suppression of radical
Islam, and the atmosphere in which vague charges of
motivations and dynamics beyond Egyptian borders
are sufficient for detention and trials. Conversely, some
may argue that since moderate Islamists are already
present in the Egyptian government and educational
system, the gradual infiltration of the state by Islamists
enabled the more hard-core and violent elements to
escape censure and surveillance.

88
BEDOUIN RADICALISM

Neither the identification of a Bedouin cell nor the

extension of the Emergency laws has defeated anti-
government activity in the Sinai. Police and the security
services have been conducting searches in northern
Sinai where they located a cache of 600 kilograms of
TNT close to the village of al-Rathlan on November
10, 2006, after an additional ton was located on
October 29 in a different location.149 While the idea that
unintegrated and poorly served areas of Egypt would
erupt into violence is believable, the problem with this
explanation is that it does not pertain to radicalism
from other more “developed” sectors of society, like
al-Zawahiri’s Ma`adi suburb of Cairo, which cannot be
remedied necessarily with better policies.
The Sinai coast enjoyed by well-off tourists at
Sharm al-Shaykh, Taba, Dahab, and Nuwayba is
quite a different setting than the northern part of the
peninsula which has an Islamist presence in the town
of al-Arish, and constant smuggling over the Egyptian-
Gaza border.150 The 360,000 Bedouin resent Egyptian
authority, re-extended over the Sinai since the Israeli
withdrawal. At the same time, a significant Palestinian
population exists in the northern Sinai and Bedouin
ties with Palestinians have sometimes formed. Islamist
views have grown in both groups and even prior to
the growth of these ideas, one could see the contrast
between scantily-dressed Europeans, Egyptians, and
Israelis frolicking on the Sinai beaches and in luxury
hotels or “authentic Bedouin camp” tents and the Sinai
residents. The International Crisis Group suggests that
a full integration of the Sinai population and a new
development strategy is crucial in solving the issue.151
More emphasis was given by the International Crisis

89
Group to Bedouin resentment of Egyptian “colonialism”
than any discussion of Islamist concerns with Egypt’s
tourist status. This issue needs some rethinking as
well. Western and Israeli tourists require a secure zone
if the Egyptian tourism sector is to operate as planned.
Indeed, some scholars have written about the way that
Egypt’s Pharoanic legacy, like Israel’s Biblical sites,
supply additional reasons for security to provide a
kind of cordon sanitaire for the Westerners. It may be
that this type of development is no longer congruent
with an increasingly angry segment of the population
in some Middle Eastern countries; in any case, it is a
question that must enter future planning.

NO SOLUTION?

There is no solution that will satisfy both the current

Egyptian regime and its disenfranchised people, nor one
that will completely satisfy both the Western security
community and the Egyptians who are convinced
that Islamism is here to stay and must be integrated
into a new more civic culture. Caryle Murphy, in her
book on radicalism and Islamism, argued for more
intellectual openness, reinterpretation of Islam, and
wrote, “Egyptians, including Islamists, need greater
freedom to debate their future, speak their minds, and
engage in politics.”152 Fawaz Gerges concludes in his
study about the emergence of global jihad:

Instead of expanding the “war on terror” and embarking

on new military ventures, American policy makers
would be better served to exert systemic pressure on
their Arab and Muslim ruling allies to structurally
reform and integrate the rising social classes into the
political space.153

90
It is these “rising classes” that identify with Islamism.
Three and half decades of militant Islamism have
taken place in Egypt. It is unfortunate that violent events
are recurring, and hopefully this is not because the state
has created or incited new cells on its own in order to
retain control over the government and counteract the
popularity of moderate Islamists. The government
(and society) has accepted and replicated moderate
Islamism in other dimensions (intellectual and social).
Moderate Islamism is supported by many Egyptians
disturbed by the sight of the Hamas government under
fire in Gaza, and the all-out Israeli effort to rid Lebanon
of Hizbullah. Indeed, regional survey data show that
many citizens see no contradiction between Islamism
and democracy.154

Other Objections to Moderate Islamists.

The remaining objections to moderate Islamists and

other forces of political opposition are that they are
directly linked to the more radical and violent Islamists
because their values (a) enable a culture of jihad and
struggle for an Islamic state and (b) destabilize the
current order. The first objection to moderate Islamism
rests on the assertion that the Brotherhood could not
be democratic and is frequently expressed by Israeli as
well as Western security experts.
President Mubarak himself has suggested that
some pluralism, rather than democracy, is the right
way forward. He has (in the same vein as Hafiz and
Bashar al-Asad) argued that Egypt’s economic needs
should be addressed before heightened political
liberalization. He also, however, stated that opposition
forces and/or the country’s illiterate population were
too [politically] immature to open the floodgates to their

91
whims.155 More recently he declared his commitment to
democracy saying, “I choose a strong and democratic
Egypt; an Egypt that strives towards the future with
free Egyptians,” and promising constitutional reforms
that would address some executive powers. At the
same time, he reaffirmed the continuing threat of
terrorism which has been the major argument for
retention of the Emergency Laws.156 While many
observers do not trust the NDP, President Mubarak
stated that he was not opposed to further amendments
of Article 76 (which currently requires a party to have
5 percent of the seats in both parliamentary bodies to
stand a presidential candidate). Independents need the
support of 250 members of Egypt’s parliamentary and
municipal bodies,157 making it nearly impossible for
them to run.158
The second objection, that Islamists destabilize
the current order, is based on a zero-sum type of
calculation, that if the government allows the Muslim
Brotherhood a legal party status, they would overrun
non-Islamist forces. Since the government will not
allow them into the system, then they are destabilizing
due to the strength of their opposition.
Even if one disputes both arguments, it is true that
the Muslim Brotherhood is able to attract popular
support in a way that the Kifaya protest movement and
the smaller opposition parties cannot. If the rules for
presidential and legislative elections were altered and
the Muslim Brotherhood was legalized as a political
party, it could achieve sufficient support to challenge
the NDP. If President Mubarak does not run for office
in 2011 (it is widely anticipated that he will not), his
successor’s legitimacy is contested, and the country
erupts in violence, then what role would the Muslim
Brotherhood play? The prospect of the huge security

92
services and possibly the army battling with Islamist
moderates is a much more serious proposition, in
a way, than the sporadic and possibly unavoidable
violence of Islamist radicals that may well continue.

IDEOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT OF THREATS

The idea that Islamists in general, particularly

moderates like the Muslim Brotherhood, are providing
ideological fodder for jihad is not very credible, though
a number of sources mentioned below insist this to
be the case. First, the Party has essentially abandoned
activist jihad and violence against the regime since
its experiences of the 1940s and 1950s. Though the
Party has produced other moderate Islamist groups
like the Wasatiyya, it, too, proposes changes within
the existing political system and abjures violence.
As for inflammatory statements, one may note the
existence of government preachers who are guilty of
greater verbal extremism against Christians than the
Brotherhood. Sticking points appear to be Egypt’s
ambivalence about Israel and Egyptian support for
other Islamist organizations like Hizbullah and Hamas,
which are recognized by most Egyptian Muslims as
being moderates bent on national liberation. Although
these groups are decried by Israelis as being terrorists,
Egyptians do not equate them with radicals like al-
Qa’ida.
Clearly, Islamism has a staying power that the West
should recognize. Clear, too, is a need for dialogue in
the country between moderate forces, whether pro-
secular or religious. Perhaps in the absence of specific
knowledge of Middle Eastern political players, some
policymakers are being misled.159

93
Climate of Radicalism?

Propaganda, or the “struggle over information”

aside, there are other areas for concern brought up
both before and after 9/11. These include the use of
the Internet for information, the funding of militant
groups, and the role of public and private mosques.
The impact of these issues varies.
The Internet became more widely used in Egypt
some years after its spread in the United States. While
it has made a significant impact, it is very important
to realize that it is not accessible by all Egyptians by
any means and did not play a great recruitment role in
Islamic militancy in the 1980s or early 1990s. In fact,
despite much emphasis on cyber or next generation
warfare today, the Internet might well be
overemphasized in terms of informational value
because of illiteracy, lack of computers, and fairly
expensive usage fees to gain access to servers at home
or to use in business offices and centers. While the
Internet is certainly of value to existing organizations,
the ubiquitous mobile telephones (with instant
messaging and cameras) have probably had a greater
political impact, and that is not restricted to Islamic
militants. While the government and security services
were alarmed by hacking events and the potential
of the Internet for recruitment, they have also been
concerned about its use for other political and social
forms of dissidence.
Funding is a very difficult issue to address because
of the lack of transparency, the informal economy, and
inefficiencies in record keeping, even in government
banks. Further, charitable activities and mosque
building (zakat) and other funding of Islamic activities
are a duty incumbent on all Muslims. As in other

94
countries, personal connections pertain to giving,
but also, sometimes, to anonymity. In addition to the
obligation of zakat, cutting off these funding streams
is not feasible because it would, in turn, deplete a
wide variety of social and charitable services, which
would actually heighten tensions. This relationship
was clearly demonstrated in Upper Egypt in the early
1990s. Egyptian government and Western insistence
on cutting the community ties of Islamist social
organizations has resulted in heightened anger against
the state.
Absolutely no institution is as influential as the
mosque and the ideological messages conveyed on a
weekly basis through it. The Egyptian government has
been accused of allowing incitement to radicalism in
the mosques. Measures can be taken in those mosques
controlled by a government ministry. Al-Azhar, as the
key religious establishment in the country, has played
an important role in regulating all processes, preachers,
and activities of nationalized mosques (some 3,000
mosques were nationalized in 1962, whereas 50,000 were
nationalized in 1994). However, in the same period, a
huge number of private mosques were constructed
in the country. Many of these were not subject to any
supervision or licensing—at least 20,000 by 1994 and
more than that number today, and the government
has focused on controls over their construction, as well
as incorporating as many as possible of the private
mosques into the national system.160 In at least one
study, and in any careful observation of the interaction
of al-Azhar and the government, one notes that the
more strongly the Egyptian state attempts to exert its
control over society—whether in an attempt to control
religious or political discourse—the more that effort
can backfire in some way; in this case meaning that

95
it has been difficult to reconcile liberal or “modern”
moderate views with more conservative ones within
the Azhar and hence within society. Also, as the Azhar
cooperated with the government, the traditional
independence of preachers—private ones, outside of
their restrictions—was enhanced.

PERPETUAL TRANSITIONS?

Wise observers in Egypt have treated political

development as a “transition,” even when systemic
change has proceeded at a glacial pace. Despite the
normally slow pace of change, there were definite
changes in 2004-05. These began with the emergence
of Kifaya and its calls along with other opposition
voices to end the Emergency Law and rein in the
autonomous behavior of the State Security Services,
end corruption, and reform electoral campaigning and
other procedures.
Following this development, President Mubarak
announced his intent to allow multiple candidates
in the presidential elections in February 2005. This
in turn led to a constitutional amendment (via
referendum) that in theory would open the door to
presidential challengers. However, in typical “one step
forward, two steps back” fashion, the wording of the
amendment actually created additional opportunities
for government repression. Because of the limits
placed on participation—the amendment specified
that only parties with 5 percent of the vote could
promote candidates, and those candidates had to be
party leaders/members of party executive groups—
independents are essentially excluded because it
would be impossible for them to acquire the necessary
250 legislative signatures stipulated in the amendment

96
to run, since they would have to obtain signatures of
seated NDP officials.161 This differs from the types of
requirements in the West which simply require voter
signatures to add candidates or sometimes initiatives
to a ballot. In addition, these rules exclude the Muslim
Brotherhood from participating since they are not a
legal party. Rather than hastening Islamist electoral
victory or strengthening secularist political parties
and rather than opening up the political framework to
allow for larger representation of opposition parties,
this electoral reform encouraged the regime to continue
limiting political reform so as to prevent opposition
parties from crossing the participation threshold. That
said, Mubarak had done his best to at least appear
democratic in coming up with an electoral proposal
and holding the referendum to pass it. Egypt’s small
opposition parties—the Wafd, the Nasirists, al-Ghad
(Tomorrow Party) the Tagammu`, the now-illegal
Labor (Sha`b) Party, and the Kifaya movement, as well
as the members of the Judges’ Club—opposed and
boycotted the referendum.
Several questions have arisen concerning the
growing power of the Muslim Brotherhood. The first
is whether the group is “democratic” or will support
democratization. How would it treat minorities or
political opposition?
While non-Islamist opposition parties such as al-
Ghad and Tagammu` boycotted the referendum, they
are at times as worried about growing support for
the Muslim Brotherhood as the NDP. The NDP has
consistently argued that if the Muslim Brotherhood
were to be legalized and gain more power, it would not
respect the rights of political contestants. In this vein,
the government had accused the Muslim Brotherhood
of underhanded tactics in the syndicates’ elections in

97
1989 and finances as a way of explaining the groups’
growing success.162 That there was little real evidence
of manipulation or tampering in these elections (the
charges were brought by the security services who have
consistently promoted the NDP and government’s
interest) has little impact on the discussion.
The Muslim Brotherhood has discussed and
demonstrated more concern for a democratic process,
and highlighted the lack of democracy in Egypt.
But opponents fear its stance in the “culture wars”
will inhibit secularist or more eclectic approaches
from the arts to politics. The Muslim Brotherhood
has also committed to the full citizenship of Coptic
(Christian) Egyptians. Yet some Muslim Brotherhood
speakers have mentioned that a Christian could not be
president, and would pay a different tax under Islamic
law. A cumulative effect of the narrow scope for
political participation is that the various parties have
had little need to collaborate or function well together
in government. Instead, various political forces are
highly experienced in dirty tricks, public accusations,
manipulation of key themes, like terrorism; or on the
other side, of exclusion, disappointment, and work-
arounds.
Some observers feel that international business
interests would be opposed to a growth in power by
the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties.
Although I have argued above (and elsewhere) that the
economic situation for most Egyptians has worsened,
it is also true that the picture is rosier for the outside
investor, certainly in comparison to decades past.
Outside investors differ; nonetheless European or
American interests might well be scared off by NDP
assertions that an Islamist-dominated Egypt would be
an unfriendly investment environment as compared to

98
the present. Low labor costs in Egypt are a consideration
for business. The prospect of occasional terrorist
attacks is offset by the fact that over the last 20 years,
whenever tourism has dropped for a time, it tends to
regain its momentum over 12 to 24 months.

2005 ELECTIONS

The 2005 election campaign had a very short

campaign period (August 17 to September 4), which
worked in the incumbent’s favor. However, while the
government disliked the Wafd Party’s use of the slogan
“We Have Been Suffocated” in its campaign, it was not
blocked. The government also did not successfully
censor discussion of corruption, of Mubarak’s finances,
or Christian-Muslim relations. The Brotherhood called
on its members to vote, but cautioned them not to vote
for “corruption” or a “tyrant.” The President for his
part, promised to do away with the Emergency Law in
place since 1981 (though he worked to renew the law
after the campaign).
The presidential elections showed a poor turnout
of 22.9 percent (7,059,010 of 32 million voters), and
there were claims of vote tampering and irregularities.
For instance, eyewitnesses saw the NDP bringing
voters by bus to the polls. Other reported violations
included, inter alia, a poll worker in Luxor telling a
voter to vote for Mubarak while another worker filled
out ballots for a voter, and a voter in Alexandria being
promised food in exchange for a Mubarak vote.163
In addition, the Presidential Election Commission
waited until several hours after the start of voting to
authorize civil society groups (NGOs)—despite some
of the organizations filing court actions—and even
after gaining authorization. When the NGOs went

99
to the polling stations, they were often either denied
access or even beaten up.164 A judicial request for
elections to be held over several days (to allow proper
supervision) was also denied.165 Ayman Nour, the
presidential candidate for the al-Ghad party, made
additional charges—that nonindelible ink was used on
votes or that no ink was applied at all. These charges
are difficult to verify one way or the other.
In the end, the President was re-elected with
6,316,784 (88.571 percent) votes. Ayman Nour did
not do as well as democratizers would have hoped,
but better than the NDP wished for, receiving 540,405
(7.577 percent) votes. He ran against his own former
party’s (Wafd) leader, Nu`man Gom`a, who received
208,891 (2.928 percent) votes.166 Seven other challengers
received less than 1 percent of the vote, in order of
their popularity—Usama Shaltut, Wahid al-Uqsuri,
Ibrahim Turk, Mamduh Qinawi, Ahmad al-Sabahi
(aged 90, he wore a tarbush (a fez) for the campaign),
Fawzi Ghazal, and Rifa`t al-Agrudi. The numerous
candidates were all really participating in a symbolic
gesture of opposition.
The Egyptian parliament is a bicameral body made
up of the People’s Assembly and the Shura Council.
The legislative elections held in November involved
the People’s Assembly and were plagued by vote-
tampering and other types of corruption. The People’s
Assembly is made up of 444 elected members and
10 members appointed by the President. In the two-
stage legislative elections, the NDP party retained its
majority, but only after Party members who had run as
independents rejoined the Party. Since there are now an
increased number of Muslim Brotherhood members,
the Assembly is now more outspoken, but it does not

100
have the ability to take effective actions opposed by
the executive such as initiating executable legislative
amendments. If there were a larger opposition, it could
(and constitutionally should) move in this direction.
The Shura Council, with 264 members (one third of
which are presidential appointees) that serve for 6
years, is merely a consultative body.
The opposition parties created a United National
Front for Change, but the Muslim Brotherhood ran
candidates on its own tickets, winning 20.7 percent
of the vote in the first round. The other parties won
only 3.5 percent of the available parliamentary seats,
consonant with their size. The government tried to
harass the Muslim Brotherhood after the first round of
voting, fearing the outcome. The government’s record
with its political challengers on the presidential and
assembly level illustrates its real intent to hold onto as
much power as possible, as seen in its arrests not only of
Muslim Brotherhood members, but also Ayman Nour,
Tal`at al-Sadat, protesters, and judges who attempted
to follow their oversight process.

The Judiciary in the Recent Elections.

The judiciary again argued to uphold their duty

overseeing the election in 2005, and their main com-
plaint was that the requirement that all results be
counted in 24 hours impeded their oversight. They
protested, and by spring 2006, the spectacle of a
government trying its own judges for attempting to
carry out the measures of promised transparency truly
angered different segments of the Egyptian public. Court
of Cassation judges Hisham Bastaweisi and Mahmoud
Makki were prosecuted when they pursued an inquiry

101
into the electoral fraud alleged in 2005. Fifty judges
held a sit-in at their syndicate’s headquarters in protest,
and police moved in to disband their protest, hitting
one.167 The 9,000-member judiciary was really protesting
over something more important—the balance between
the executive and other branches of government
in Egypt. The struggle between the judiciary and
the executive branch was dampened by the Dahab
bombings, though the judiciary was not impressed
with the security-based argument for the continuation
of the emergency laws voted in by the People’s
Assembly in April 2006. Many Egyptians argued that
with these bombings, the security services emphasized
a politically convenient threat. The March 26, 2007,
referendum on amendments to Egypt’s Constitution
was rushed and boycotted by the opposition. It put into
place a revision to Article 88, which removed judicial
oversight of elections, transferring it to an electoral
commission. This change effectively squelched efforts
at more open and fair elections.
Violence and election tampering took place in the
first round of elections for Egypt’s Shura Council on
June 11, 2007. Thugs intimidated voters, monitors and
voters could not enter polls, and police manhandled
monitors in Upper Egypt. Violence and interference
took place where Muslim Brotherhood candidates
were running, especially in Giza and Imbaba.

PREEMPTIVE REFORM?

In response to criticism about the earlier elections

and general direction of political reform, President
Mubarak announced that he would make changes to
the Constitution. In January 2007, the proposed changes
to 34 articles, which had been prepared privately, were

102
revealed. The President’s changes to the Constitution
addressed several areas that sparked international and
national criticism.
Judge, historian, and author, Tariq al-Bishri had
predicted the revisions would not liberalize the
situation, but rather tighten up possible loopholes.
Al-Bishri explained that Mubarak sought to alter
Article 88 so as to constrain the judiciary’s oversight
of elections, uphold the party slate system, and restrict
the growth of any strong anti-NDP lobby within the
People’s Assembly.168
In addition to these changes, the President intended
to introduce a new anti-terrorism law, perhaps by
summer 2007. This will undoubtedly attack certain
protections previously maintained in the Constitution
as well. In the draft amendments which were approved
all at once on March 19, Article 179, which Egyptians
are referring to as a “great disaster,” allows for trial
of civilians in military courts (the ongoing practice
enshired within the emergency law), arbitrary arrests,
searches without warrants, and violations of privacy
previously protected within Articles 41, 44, and 45 of
the Constitution. This amended Article 179 does away
with the Office of the Socialist Public Prosecutor and
now permits the Egyptian president to allocate a charge
of terrorism to any court, thereby permitting referral to
military courts.
Another revision to Article 5 blocks a party or any
political activity carried out in a “religious frame of
reference” (marja `iyya). This quite obviously targets the
Muslim Brotherhood, both in its current operating mode
and as a political party. The amendments grant certain
novel rights to the Egyptian parliament, but Article 136
now allows the Egyptian president to actually dissolve
parliament.169 Along with the referendum’s evidence

103
of devious extensions of authoritarianism rather
than genuine reforms, there remains the previously
mentioned antipathy to succession by the president’s
son. The NDP promoted this idea in campaign banners,
including “Yes, to Mubarak, to the son of Mubarak, and
the grandson of Mubarak,”170 and the shouted slogan
“mish kifaya!” (“not enough,” meaning the people have
not tired of Mubarak), countering the slogan of the
protest movement, Kifaya.
Since the elections, the renewal of the emergency
laws, the amendments to the Constitution, and the
apparent slowdown of democratization, the Egyptian
public has been distracted by a number of other issues,
including a confusing new discussion about Egypt’s
possible initiation of a nuclear energy program. This
began in response to the media uproar over Iran’s
showdown with the IAEA and Western nations.
The economy was more important to a larger number
of Egyptians. At year’s end, the failure of public-sector
companies to pay promised bonuses and overtime
resulted in numerous strikes and demonstrations from
December 2006 to February 2007; and one, the largest
shutdown since 1994, involved over 10,000 workers at
the spinning and weaving factory in Kafr al-Dawwar.

CONCLUSION

Egypt’s prominence in Arab political, intellectual,

and cultural life should have positioned it more
advantageously to launch a democratic experiment
than countries reeling from war, sectarian strife, and
insurgent activities like Afghanistan or Iraq. If there
is indeed general public support in the region for
democratization, then Egypt with its many NGOs
and regional strategic importance could be expected

104
to continue moving in a positive direction. Yet
authoritarianism and the struggle to maintain political
control have slowed and interrupted this process.
As explained above, there appears to be no easy way
to end sporadic militant Islamist violence. The regime’s
truce, or political compromise with radical Islamists,
in 1999 enhanced its political confidence, and it did
allow for recovery in the tourist and business sectors.
These are, however, periodically shaken by continuing
attacks, and the suspension of political rights through
the use of the emergency laws has not ended the
problem. It is clear that the Egyptian government’s anti-
and counterterrorist efforts to amplify state control and
eradicate violence have not succeeded. Nor has the
suppression of moderate Islamism strengthened the
state in positive ways. Further, if Egyptian or American
talk about liberty and reform is nothing but kalam fadi
(easy talk), then Egypt’s political future appears quite
grim.
Authoritarianism is ill-suited to meet the novel
dilemmas posed through globalization, whether these
are economic, or outcomes of radicalized Islam. Thus,
the United States should do more to promote increased
transparency, democratization, and reform in this
important Middle Eastern country. Yet it should be
forewarned that Egyptians, regardless of their stance
toward their own government, fiercely value their
own sovereignty and independence. The following
observations and recommendations may be useful.
1. U.S. policymakers can expect to see the continued
emergence of radical Islamist elements such as the
Sinai bombers. It is important to understand these as
a confluence of different factors—the regional spread
of jihadist ideology, failures in governance including
elements of repression and injustice in counterterrorist

105
measures, and antipathy to Western and Israeli policies
in the region.
2. Underdevelopment and political repression
could contribute to disaffection in areas like the Sinai
Peninsula, and Upper Egypt, but also in so many other
areas of the country, where despite certain economic
progress, too little reaches large numbers of people
who subsist on very modest incomes. Worker disputes
have emerged from relative wage stagnation, and, in
all, the government needs encouragement to provide
avenues for active citizenship, and not merely small
handouts, relief, or emergency measures.
3. U.S. policymakers should look scientifically and
dispassionately at the utility of moderate Islam as an
antidote to radical Islamism, as suggested by a Rand
report and Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution, to
mention only a few.171 This means a careful examination
of the Muslim Brotherhood, its offshoot, the Wasat
Party, and their potential. Given the continuing trend of
Islamization, Islamists will undoubtedly play a role in a
democratized Egypt. Just as the new Iraqi government
now contains, and will undoubtedly include, Islamist
parties in the future, this trend is too important to lock
out in Egypt.
4. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, like its
counterpart in Syria and Hamas in the West Bank
and Gaza, is now engaged in discussion about the
implications of adopting an altered policy toward
Israel. While the parties face different tensions, the
Islamist stance on Israel could change in the future
if a just settlement of the outstanding grievances of
Palestinians could be reached. Many Egyptians who
are not members of the Muslim Brotherhood actually
share this position with their party. The policymaker
should proceed with the caution that it would be

106
unwise to exclude Islamist parties—Hamas and the
Muslum Brotherhood—in this process. To do so
would be hypocritical, given the importance of Jewish
religious parties inside Israel.
5. If, on the other hand, U.S. policymakers wish to
reject and counteract the growth of virtually all Islamist
groups, then they must reexamine their definition of
democracy and the proposal that liberty will prevent
terrorism.172 They must anticipate the continued use
of force against moderate as well as radical Islamists
in Egypt and the possibility for increased violence and
dissatisfaction as a result.
6. Policymakers should consider various scenarios
that might take place in Egypt. By the year 2011,
one might see (a) a peaceful political transition; (b)
a military coup that will decide the form of political
transition and the future leader of the country; (c) a
period of violence resulting from contested political
transition that could include the emergence of a more
violent Islamist extremism; or (d) a situation in which
the peace accords with Israel fail, perhaps due to
action by Israel itself. Given all of these possibilities,
we should develop more realistic stances and plans
toward each, recognizing that state failure is not a one-
fits-all condition.
7. U.S. policymakers should urge Egyptian
policymakers to continue economic reform, but
they should educate themselves about its secondary
effects. Privatization and “opening” the economy
had certain benefits and also brought social costs.
The dream of using the desert to alleviate population
pressures in the Nile Valley was promoted by Egypt’s
government from Sadat City and the 10th of October
City to Mubarak’s South Valley Development Project,
known as the Toshka project, in the barren Western

107
desert near Lake Nasser. Detractors call Toshka, at a
cost of $66 billion dollars, Mubarak’s Pyramid. Will
it really relieve overcrowding, and will the incentives
the government plans to offer provide a better life?
With a large population and low supply of water per
person, is it best to build in the hottest area (over 43
degrees Centigrade/122 degrees Farenheit in the
summer) of the country? Most policymakers need to
educate themselves about development in the Middle
East to understand the challenge of planning and
development, as well as other aspects of economic
transformation and privatization, to comprehend the
possible impact of current policies.
8. U.S. policymakers should encourage the Egyptian
government to begin much more thorough reforms in
other areas of the government (public education and
health care) and in the creation of civic institutions that
can make beneficial changes and promote cooperative
decisionmaking. The overcrowding, invisible tuition in
the form of private lessons, deficits in the curriculum,
and promotion of vocational education mean that the
poorest students fail to matriculate. Those with funds
for private lessons may complete their schooling
but must compete against students with a foreign
language education for jobs in the enlarging private
sector. Students who attend vocational schooling
have far fewer options than others. The challenges
facing the health care system are similarly complex.
U.S. policymakers would be best advised to make
recommendations in tandem with other European
donors and WHO (the World Health Organization).
9. U.S. policymakers should insist that the Egyptian
government ensure the political and human rights of
citizens, including the political opposition and those
arrested under the emergency laws. The practices

108
of torture, extralegal physical abuse, and irregular
detentions must cease. Citizens must also be free to
cast their ballots without interferrence. The case of
Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the arrest and sentencing of
Ayman Nour, the past and recent arrests of Muslim
Brotherhood candidates, and the electoral violence
and irregularities of the last several elections have no
place in a free and democratic Egypt.
10. A more difficult arena in need of reform is
the uncivic culture that is a natural consequence of
a troubled, if not failing state. Ilya Harik explains
Egypt’s “uncivic culture” as one directly deriving from
a flawed development process. Cynicism, corruption,
lawlessness, and individualism are all symptoms of
this culture.173 From al-Arish to the Delta and from
Cairo to Minya, the local and the personal always
take precedence over Egypt’s national interests. That
cannot be directly addressed by U.S. policymakers,
but they might be able to encourage its nurturing,
again through more plentiful and better information
about the concerns of Egyptians which can at least be
deduced from media in English from Egypt itself.
11. U.S. policymakers, officials, and informed
Americans should be sensible and sensitive in
the approach that they take to the “war of ideas”
or communications regarding Islam, Muslims,
and the appropriate way to dampen extremism.
Treating Egyptian Muslims as if they are the source
of the war on terror instead of an ally in that war is
counterproductive.
12. Egyptians should not let themselves be shut out
of the discussions on counterterrorism nor the future of
the Middle East. Universities, research institutes, and
NGOs should have a voice in policymaking, instead of
merely reacting to documents issued about their country

109
from Washington-based entities. DoD officials and
U.S. policymakers should forge links with appropriate
bodies in Egypt outside of the U.S. Embassy, where
the lengthy history of Islamic extremism has sparked
debate and ideas that are seldom heard within the U.S.
policymaking establishment. Such an engagement
would require efforts on the Egyptian side as well.
13. The U.S. military relationship and programs
with the Egyptian military are extremely important to
both sides. Bright Star, the biannual exercise conducted
by U.S. Central Command, the Egyptian forces,
and eight to ten other nations, was not held in 2003
due to U.S. commitments elsewhere. It successfully
resumed. However, in 2006 and 2007 some American
policymakers cast doubt on the amount and efficacy of
U.S. aid given to Egypt.
In 2007, Congress voted to withhold $2 million in
military aid until certain political and judicial reforms
are made, and weapons flows to Gaza cease. This
could be the only way for the United States to push for
reform, but the effort is offset by the new $13 billion
militery assistance agreement. DoD officials should
have sufficiant data about Egypt and be able to think
creatively about the prospects of future conflicts in the
region, including that outlined in 6 (d) above, so they
neither over- nor underestimate the role of the Egyptian
military. Further, the large size of the Egyptian security
forces should serve as a wake-up call. The future of
these forces is also inextricably tied to the political
future of the state.

110
 ENDNOTES

1. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong: The Clash Between Islam

and Modernity in the Middle East, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002; Fereydoun Hoveyda, The Broken Crescent: The “Threat”
of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.
2. I. William Zartman, “Introduction, Posing the Problem
of State Collapse,” I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States: The
Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority, Boulder, CO:
Lynne Rienner, 1995, p. 5.
3. For instance, Gabriel A. Almond and James Coleman, The
Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1960.
4. Mohammed M. Hafez and Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Violence
as Contention in the Egyptian Islamic Movement,” in Quintan
Wiktorowicz, ed., Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory
Approach, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004; Raymond
William Baker, Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, pp. 187-188.
5. James Toth, “Islamism in Southern Egypt: A Case Study of
a Radical Religious Movement, International Journal of Middle East
Studies, Vol. 35, November 2003, No. 4, p. 362.
6. International Crisis Group, “Egypt’s Sinai Question,” Middle
East/North Africa Report, N. 61, January 30, 2007.
7. Speech at the 20th anniversary of the National Endowment
for Democracy, Washington, DC, November 6, 2003.
8. Daniel Brumberg, Democratization Versus Liberalization in the
Arab World: Dilemmas and Challenges for U.S. Foreign Policy, Carlisle
Barracks: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005, p. 12.
9. Ibid., p. 12.
10. Sherifa Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and the
Future of Counterinsurgency, Carlisle Barracks: Strategic Studies
Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2005, p. 1.
11. The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shaykh Professor Dr. Ali Jum`ah
(Gum`ah), is a signatory to the “Open Letter to His Holiness Pope
Benedict XVI,” issued in 2006 in response to the Pope’s lecture at
the University of Regensburg, September 12, 2006.
12. Bassiouni Hilwani in `Aqidati, November 11, 2003.

111
 13. Al-Ahram, November 10, 2003.
14. Measuring “freedom” is a complicated task that rests on
universal standards. Freedom House gives Egypt an overall grade
of 6 in political rights (as compared to Jordan’s 5) for 2006; but it
also measures women’s access to freedom, and the scores in this
regard are:
Nondiscrimination and Access to Justice: 3.0
Autonomy, Security, and Freedom of the Person: 2.8
Economic Rights and Equal Opportunity: 2.8
Political Rights and Civic Voice: 2.7
Social and Cultural Rights: 2.4
See Freedom House, “Country Reports: Egypt,” 2006.
15. Ahmad Al-Sayyid al-Najjar [Naggar] in Al-Inhiyar al-Iqtisadi
fi `Asr Mubarak, Cairo: Merit Press, 2005, shows the devastating
corruption and negative effects of these policies. One may compare
his critique to Ilya Harik’s stance that insufficient privatization
occurred in industry, and agriculture, still a mixed sector, will be
more efficient and less distorted as it “liberalizes” (privatizes). Ilya
Harik, Economic Policy Reform in Egypt, Gainesville: University of
Florida Press, 1997, pp. 38-85.
16. Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics,
and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985, pp. 255-260.
17. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Security
Assistance: State and DOD Need to Assess How the Foreign
Military Financing Program for Egypt Achieves U.S Foreign Policy
and Security Goals,” Report to the Committee on International
Relations, House of Representatives, April 2006, p. 17.
18. Mala Tabory, The Multinational Force and Observers in the
Sinai: Organization, Structure, and Function, Westview Special
Studies on the Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986.
19. Robert Springborg, Mubarak’s Egypt: Fragmentation of the
Political Order, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989, pp. 107-119.
20. Ibid. pp. 115-123.
21. Tapei Times, June 5, 2006.
22. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “Security
Assistance: State and DOD Need to Assess How the Foreign
Military Financing Program for Egypt Achieves U.S Foreign Policy

112
and Security Goals,” Report to the Committee on International
Relations, House of Representatives, April 2006.
23. Posted at The Arabist, Issander El Amrani, U.S. Military Aid
to Egypt and Congress, available at arabist.net/archives/2006/05/23/
us-military-aid-to-egypt-and-congress/.
24. Numerous reports (330) documenting some of the many
acts of violence were sent to the Higher Committee for the
Liquidation of Feudalism set up by President Nasir in 1966.
Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity,
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002, pp. 154-160.
25. Ibid., pp. 160-167.
26. For an idea of the subsidy system’s workings and problems
circa 1997, one could see Akhter U. Ahmed, Howarth E. Bouis,
Tamar Gutner, and Hans Lofgren, The Egyptian Food Subsidy
System: Structure, Performance and Options for Return, Research
Report 119, Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research
Institute, 2001.
27. Mitchell, Rule of Experts.
28. Ibid., pp. 212-221.
29. Galal Amin, Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes
in Egyptian Society from 1950 to the Present, Cairo: American
University in Cairo Press, 2000, pp. 65-75, 101-118.
30. Al-Wafd, July 4, 2006; based on an economic reform report
of Egypt’s Shura Council.
31. Husam Tammam, “Révisions douloureuses pour les Frères
musulmans d’Egypte” (“Painful Reforms for the Muslim Brothers
of Egypt”), Le Monde Diplomatique, September 2005.
32. International Labour Office, Global Employment Trends
Brief, January 2006, Table 4, from ILO Working Poverty Model,
available at www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/strat/download/
getb06en.pdf.
33. Information from Tonia Rifaey, World Health Organization,
Cairo, May 2006.
34. IRIN, United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs, “Egypt: Despite Advances, Many Egyptians
Struggle to Feed Families,” February 16, 2007, available at www.
irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=26241.

113
 35. Thomas W. Croghan, “Road Less Traveled: Four Developing
Countries Blaze New Trails to Better Health,” Rand Review, 2006,
available at www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/fall2006/
road.html.
36. Matthie Fintz, “A Reform For the Poor Without Them?
The Fate of the Egyptian Health Reform Programme in 2005,”
in Florian Kohstall, Director, L’Ēgypte dans l’année 2005, Cairo:
CEDEJ, 2006, pp. 227-256.
37. Freedom House, Country Reports: Egypt, 2006. The gender
gap might be due to the fact that couples may not apply for birth
certificates for girls who then lack the right to attend school, while
other girls are withdrawn from school at the ages of 13 or 14 in
rural areas to marry despite the fact that early marriage is against
the law.
38. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics,
Modernity, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002; Ilya
Harik, Economic Policy Reform in Egypt, Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1997.
39. James B. Mayfield, Rural Politics in Nasser’s Egypt: A Quest
for Legitimacy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971, pp. 61-63,
and discussed by Mitchell, pp. 161-164.
40. Sherifa Zuhur and Tonia Rifaey, “Visualizing Identity:
Gender and Nation in Egyptian Cartoons,” Sherifa Zuhur, ed., in
Colors of Enchantment: Theater, Dance, Music and Visual Arts of the
Middle East, Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo,
2001.
41. Malcolm Kerr, The Arab Cold War, 1958-1967; A Study or
Ideology in Politics, London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
42. Naguib Mahfouz, Mirrors, Roger Allen, trans., Minneapolis:
Bibliotecha Islamica, 1977, pp. 28-32, 151-155; Beth Baron, Egypt as
a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2005; Zuhur and Rifaey, “Visualizing Identity:
Gender and Nation in Egyptian Cartoons” in Zuhur, ed., Colors
of Enchantment.
43. Diane Singerman, Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics,
and Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985, p. 261.
44. Sherifa Zuhur, “The Mixed Impact of Feminism in Egypt
of the 1990s” Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA)

114
Vol. 5, No. 1, March 2001; Sherifa Zuhur, Gender, Sexuality and the
Criminal Laws in Middle East and North Africa: A Comparative Study,
Istanbul: KKIP/WWHR (Women for Women’s Human Rights),
2005.
45. Abdel Monem Said Aly, “Back to the Fold? Egypt and
the Arab World,” Occasional Paper, Washington DC: Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1988.
46. Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah,
New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
47. Springborg, Mubarak’s Egypt, p. 238.
48. Nabil Fahmy, “Egypt’s Unwavering Path to Democratic
Reform,” Mediterranean Quarterly. Vol. 17, No. 3, Summer 2006.
49. Fréderic Vairel, “Quand ‘Assez!’ ne suffit plus: Quelques
remarques sur Kifaya et autres mobilisations Ègyptiennes”
(“When ‘Enough’ Isn’t Enough: Some Remarks on Kifuya and
Other Egyptian Mobilizations”), in Florian Kohstall, ed., Director,
L’Ègypte dans l’année 2005, Cairo: CEDEJ, 2006, pp. 130-131.
50. Diane Singerman, “The Networked World of Islamist
Social Movements,” in Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory
Approach, Quintan Wiktorowicz, ed., Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004, p. 160.
51. International Crisis Group, “Reforming Egypt: In Search of
a Strategy,” October 4, 2005.
52. Personal interviews.
53. “An Interview with Abdul Moneim Abu El-Foutouh,”
Islamism Digest, Centre for the Study of Terrorism, August 2006.
54. Maye Kassem, Egyptian Politics: The Dynamics of Authoritarian
Rule, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004.
55. Raymond Baker, Egypt’s Uncertain Revolution Under
Nasser and Sadat, Cambridge: Harvard University, 1978; Derek
Hopwood, Egypt, Politics and Society, 1945-1984, Boston: Unwin
Hyman, 1985.
56. Noha El-Mikawy, The Building of Consensus in Egypt’s
Transition Process, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press,
1999.
57. Richard Haass, “The New Middle East,” Foreign Affairs,
November/December 2006.

115
 58. “Egypt: Rice Fails to Address Rights and Governance
Issues, Say Analysts,” IRINNews.org, United Nations Office for
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, October 24, 2006.
59. Fawaz Gerges, “The Decline of Revolutionary Islam in
Algeria and Egypt,” Survival, Vol. 41, No. 1, March 1999, pp. 113-
125. In 1999 Gerges wrote that revolutionary “Islamists no longer
represent a real threat to the survival of the secular authoritarian
regimes in the Middle East.” (He was not alone; French scholar
Giles Kepel’s thesis—that radical Islam was waning—was similar.)
Following 9/11, this argument became more difficult to make.
60. Anthony Shadid, Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats
and the New Politics of Islam, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001,
p. 2.
61. This “Shayma effect” (named for a 12 year-old victim in
the cross-fire, meaning loss of support of the Muslim masses
for jihadists) is, according to Jarret M. Brachman and William
F. McCants, a key vulnerability of al-Qa’ida. Here they draw on
al-Zawahiri’s Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, when he
explains the fallout from the girl’s death during the assassination
attempt on Prime Minister Atif Sidqi. Jihadist awareness of this
danger has led to self-critique and introspection, even factionalism.
Brachman and McCants, “Stealing Al-Qaida’s Playbook,”
Combating Terrorism Center Report, January 2006, p. 11.
62. Ibrahim Karawan, “Violence and Strategic Choices: The
Case of Islamic Militancy,” Center for Security Studies and
Conflict Research, 2002.
63. Mohammed M. Hafez and Quintan Wiktorowicz, “Violence
as Contention in the Egyptian Islamic Movement,” Quintan
Wiktorowicz, ed., Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory
Approach, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp.
61-88.
64. Shadid, Legacy of the Prophet; Geneive Abdo, No God but
God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000; Shaul Mishal and Avraham Sela, The Palestinian Hamas:
Vision, Violence and Coexistence, New York: Columbia University
Press, 2000; Judith Palmer Harik, Hezbollah: The Changing Face of
Terrorism, London: I. B. Tauris, 2004, 2005; Quintan Wiktorowicz,
The Management of Islamic Activism: Salafis, the Muslim Brotherhood,
and State Power in Jordan, Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2001.

116
 65. Carrie Rosefsky Wickham, Mobilizing Islam: Religion,
Activism and Political Change in Egypt, New York: Columbia
University Press, 2002; Raymond William Baker, Islam Without
Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1993.
66. Wiktorowicz, The Management of Islamic Activism, 2001.
67. For a thorough account of al-Azhar University, see Malika
Zghal, Gardiens de L’Islam: Les oulémas d’Al-Azhar dans l’Égypte
contemporaine (Guardians of Islam: The ‘Ulama of al-Azhar in
Contemporary Egypt), Paris: Presses de Sciences PO, 1996.
68. Mustafa Kabha and Haggai Erlich, “Al-Ahbash and
Wahhabiyya: Interpretations of Islam,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies, Vol. 38, No. 4, November 2006, pp. 527-528,
529-530.
69. As in William McCants, ed., “Militant Ideology Atlas,
Executive Report,” West Point, NY: U.S. Military Academy,
Combating Terrorism Center, 2006, pp. 10-11.
70. Amira Sonbol, The New Mamluks, Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 2000, pp. xxx-xxxi, 21-31.
71. The following request by an Indonesian Muslim and
patriot, and fatwa given by Rashid Rida in the journal, Manar,
demonstrates his broader influence on issues of the day. Rashid
Rida, “Patriotism, Nationalism, and Group Spirit in Islam,” in
John L. Donohue and John L. Esposito, eds., Islam in Transition:
Muslim Perspectives, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982,
pp. 46-59. Rida, a Syrian, was a second generation member of the
reform (salafi) movement.
72. Richard P. Mitchell, Society of the Muslim Brothers, London:
Oxford University Press, 1969.
73. Ahmad S. Moussalli, Moderate and Radical Islamic
Fundamentalism: The Quest for Modernity, Legitimacy, and the Islamic
State, Gainesville: University of Florida, 1999, pp. 82-131.
74. Moussalli, p. 151.
75. Sayyid Qutb, Ma`rakat al-Islam wa al-ra`smaliyya (The Battle
of Islam with Capitalism), Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1975, p. 28; also see
Sayyid Qutb, Fi al-tarikh: Fikra wa-minhaj (On History: An Idea and
A Method), Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1974, 23-25.
76. Sayed Kotb, Social Justice in Islam, John Hardie, trans.,
Washington, DC: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953.

117
 77. Sayyid Qutb, al-Ma`alim fi tariq (Signposts on the Road),
Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1980, 7th edition, pp. 173-174.
78. Nazih N. Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the
Arab World, London, 1991.
79. Sadat carries the legacy of a “man of peace” in the West. He
was not mourned in Egypt like his predecessor, Gamal Abd al-
Nasir. Perhaps this is because he was identified with the interests
of the elites (khassa) and not the `amma (or the sha`b, the ordinary
folk), through the psychological effect of his 180 degree reversal of
national and foreign policies. Also see `Abd al-`Azim Ramadan,
Misr fi ahd al-Sadat (Egypt in the Time of Sadat), Beirut: Dar al-Ruqi,
1986.
80. This being the Weberian thesis for the development of
religious fervor.
81. Sherifa Zuhur, “State Power and the Progress of Militant
and Moderate Islamism in Egypt,” in James Forest, ed., Countering
Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century, Vol. III, New York:
Praeger Security, 2007.
82. Giles Kepel, Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the
Pharaoh, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 93-94.
83. Zuhur, “State Power.”
84. Ibid.; Johannes J. Jansen, “De betkenis van het Islamisitisch
fundamentalisme: De Lotgevallen van de Shoukri-group in Egypte,” in
P. Boele et al. eds., Naar de letter, Beschouvingen over fundamentalisme,
Utrecht: 1991, pp. 185-202; or see J. J. Jansen, “Takfir wa al-Hijrah,
Jama`at al-” in John Esposito, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern
Islamic World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
85. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Islamic
Groups: Methodological Note and Preliminary Findings,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, 1980.
86. Ibrahim, “Anatomy;” also see Saad Eddin Ibrahim, “Egypt’s
Islamic Activism in the 1980s,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 10, No.
2, April 1988.
87. Denis Sullivan and Sana Abed-Kotob, Islam in Contemporary
Egypt: Civil Society vs. the State, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999,
p. 78.
88. Ibid., pp. 82-83.

118
 89. Nemat Guenena, “The ‘Jihad’: An ‘Islamic Alternative’ in
Egypt,” Cairo Papers in Social Science, Vol. 9, Summer 1986, p. 63.
90. Stephen Ulph, “The Islambouli Enigma,” Global Terrorism
Analysis. Terrorism Monitor, Vol. 1, Issue 3, September 3, 2004.
91. Guenena, p. 55.
92. A 27-year-old engineer executed after Sadat’s assassination.
The book draws heavily on the ideas of Ibn Taymiyya, a medieval
writer. See Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam, Medieval Theology and
Modern Politics, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985, pp. 103-
104.
93. Rudolph Peters, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam, Princeton:
Markus Wiener, 1996, pp. 161-167; see also Youssef Aboul-Einein
and Sherifa Zuhur, Islamic Rulings on Warfare, Carlisle: Strategic
Studies Institute, 2004.
94. Aboul-Einein and Zuhur.
95. See Fawaz A. Gerges, “The End of the Islamist Insurgency
in Egypt? Cost and Prospects,” Middle East Journal, Vol. 53, No.
54, Fall 2000.
96. Guenena, pp. 43, 44.
97. Wickham, Mobilizing Islam, pp. 195-196.
98. Human Rights Watch, “Reading between the Red Lines: The
Repression of Academic Freedom in Egyptian Universities,” 2005,
available at www.hrw.org.
99. `Abd al-Qadir al-Shuhayb, al-Ikhtiraq: Qissat sharikat tawzif
al-amwal (The Disruption: The Story of the Investment Companies),
Cairo: Sina` lil-Nashr, 1989.
100. “Special Report on Egypt,” Middle East Economic Digest,
October 14, 1988.
101. Denis Sullivan, “Extra-State Actors and Privatization
in Egypt,” Ilya Harik and Denis Sullivan, eds., Privatization and
Liberalization in the Middle East, Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992, pp. 40-41; Said Aly, “Privatization in Egypt,” pp. 53-
54.
102. Mahfuz was attacked for the subject matter of his early
trilogy (for which he won the Nobel Prize), Children of Gebalawi.
The three novels critique Egyptian society as seen through a
modest neighborhood showing the devastating cruelty of life
there. The characters carry the names of Muslims in early Islam,

119
as is also typical of modern-day Egyptians. Islamists took this
authorial choice to mean a mockery of Islamic society and mores.
103. Toth, pp. 559-563.
104. `Umar `Abd al-Rahman, Kalimat al-haqq (The Word of
Truth), Cairo: Dar al-Itisam, 1987, pp. 177-199; Gehad Auda,
“Omar Abdel-Rahman,” John Esposito, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of
the Modern Islamic World, New York: Oxford University, 1995.
105. Zghal; or for the commonly prevailing U.S. media
perspective on the Islamists, see Judith Miller, “Sheikh Emerges
on TV to Deny Link to Bombing,” New York Times, March 19,
1993.
106. Mona al-Ghobashy, “The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian
Muslim Brothers,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.
37, No. 3, August 2005, pp. 379-380, 382.
107. Denis Sullivan and Sana Abed-Kotob, Islam in Contemporary
Egypt, pp. 132-133.
108. Ibid., p. 133.
109. Mandy McClure, “Stop the Presses,” Cairo Times online
archive, May 25-31, 2000, p. 4.
110. El-Ghobashy, pp. 381-383.
111. Ibid., 389-390.
112. Ahmed Moussa, “Egypt’s Most Wanted Egyptian
Afghans,” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, October 18-24, 2001.
113. Khaled Dawoud, “Concepts of Jihad,” Al-Ahram Weekly
Online, January 11-17, 2001, at weekly.ahram.org.eg.
114. Samir Rafaat, “Ayman al-Zawahri The World’s Second
Most Wanted Man,” November 1, 2001, www.egy.com/people.
115. Zuhur, A Hundred Osamas.
116. Ibid., pp. 35, 38.
117. Philip Smucker, “Arab Elite Warms to Al Qaeda Leaders:
Al Qaeda Biographer Stops Sales of Book Because It’s Too Critical,”
Christian Science Monitor, July 30, 2002.
118. The book also offers details about organizational and
personnel matters of the Gama`at, and subsequently, the al-Qa’ida
connection. al-Zayyat, Ayman al-Zawahiri kama `ariftuhu (Ayman
al-Zawahiri as I Knew Him), Cairo: Dar Misr Al Mahrousa, 2002.

120
Al-Zawahiri’s own writing is important as well, particularly his
Bitter Harvest, which is an attack on the Muslim Brotherhood, and
his efforts to combat popular mythologizing about al-Qa’ida in
Knights under the Banner. Here for instance, he is at pains to show
that the United States did not fund al-Qa’ida, and that its money
came from popular Arab organizations (not Arab governments,
though, in fact, the Saudi government has been implicated in
funding of the mujahidin). Zawhiri, Knights under the Prophet’s
Banner, December 3, 2001, as serialized in al-Sharq al-Awsat.
119. Cécile Hennion, “Les faces cachées du Sinai” (“The Hidden
Sides of the Sinai”), Le Monde, April 26, 2006.
120. Chris Zambelis, “Sinai Bombings Mark Latest in Pattern
of Symbolic Attacks in Egypt,” Terrorism Focus, Vol. 3, Issue 17,
May 2, 2006.
121. “Al-Qaeda Pushes Outer Limits,” Debka-Net Weekly, Issue
177, October 15, 2004.
122. Sherifa Zuhur, “A New Phase for Jihad in Egypt?” in
Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities, Christopher
Heffelfinger, ed., Washington DC: Jamestown Foundation, 2006.
123. “From Riyadh/East to Sinai” 24/8/1425 h./October 8,
2004, posted on numerous Islamist sites. See also Sherifa Zuhur,
“The New Jihad,” Terrorism Bulletin, Wilberforce Quarterly, Spring
2006.
124. Hajj X as interviewed by Smadar Lavie. Lavie, The Poetics
of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories of Bedouin Identity under
Israeli and Egyptian Rule, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1990, p. 162.
125. Jailan Halawi, “In Hot Pursuit,” Al-Ahram Weekly, May
18-24, 2006.
126. Al-Gumhuriyya, April 29.
127. “`Amaliyatan irhabitan ta’thiran al-faza’ fi Midan `Abd al-
Mun`im Riyadh wa al-Sayida `A’isha,” al-Ahram, May 1, 2005, p. 1.
128. Columbia Daily Tribune, May 1, 2005.
129. His remains are depicted along with the official version
of events in “al-Irhabi al-qatil qafaza min A`ala Kubri Uktubir,” al-
Ahram, May 2, 2005, p. 5.
130. The latter version was provided by Security Chief Nabil
El-Ezabi.

121
 131. Columbia Daily Tribune, May 1, 2005.
132. Jailan Halawi, “Terrorist Replay,” Al-Ahram Weekly, May
2, 2005.
133. Summer Said, “226 Arrested after Cairo Attacks,” Arab
News (Saudi Arabia), May 2, 2005, available at www.arabnews.
com.
134. Al Jazeera, May 8, 2005, also available at english.aljazeera.
net.
135. Khairi Abaza, “Sharm al-Shaykh Bombings: The Egyptian
Context,” PolicyWatch #1023, Washington Institute for Near
Eastern Policy, August 12, 2005; some reports said that local
hospitals claimed there were 88 killed.
136. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez reportedly supported
this view. “Egyptians Search for Three Blast Suspects,” Foxnews.
com, Sunday, July 24, 2005.
137. Amnesty International U.S.A.: “Egypt. Annual Report
2006,” covers 2005, the report covering 2006 should be posted
under 2007 at this site, www.amnestyusa.org/countries/egypt/
document.do?id=ar&yr=2006; and Human Rights Watch, “Egypt:
Award Winning Blogger Among New Arrests”; “Egypt: Police
Intensify Crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood,” December 18,
2006; “Hundreds More Protesters Arrested,” May 18, 2006; “Police
Severely Beat Pro-Democracy Activists” May 31, 2006; “Egypt:
Journalists Still Risk Jail under Press Law,” July 11, 2006; “Egypt:
MP Jailed in Latest Attack on Free Expression,” November 4, 2006;
all accessible at www.hrw.org.
138. John Voll, “Fundamentalism in the Arab World: Egypt
and the Sudan,” Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds.,
Fundamentalisms Observed, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1991, p. 389.
139. “The Black Hole: The Fate of Islamists Rendered to
Egypt,” Human Rights Watch, May 2005, available at hrw.org/
reports/2005/egypt0505/; and see “Hostage Taking and Abuse of
Female Detainees,” Human Rights Watch, available at www.hrw.
org/about/projects/womrep/General-108.htm.
140. Al-Ghad official statement, May 1, 2005.
141. Arab News, May 2, 2005.
142. Doha Al-Zohairy, Al Jazeera, May 1, 2005.

122
 143. Al-Jazeera, May 2, 2005.
144. Editorial, Al-Quds al-`Arabi, London, May 2, 2005.
145. Abd al-Mun`im Ibrahim, Akhbar al-Khalij, Bahrain, May
2, 2005.
146. Such practices continued and were used against (non-
Islamist) protesters as well. Human Rights News, “Crackdown
on Anti-War Protesters,” Human Rights Watch, March 24, 2003;
“Hostage Taking and Intimidation by Security Forces,” 1995;
“Hostage Taking and Abuse of Female Detainees,” no date.
147. Women Claim Islam: Creating Feminism Through Literature,
New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 88.
148. Jailan Halawi, “Sects and Politics,” Al-Ahram Weekly
Online, April 27–May 3, 2006.
149. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, November 11, 2006.
150. International Crisis Group, “Egypt’s Sinai Question,”
Middle East/North Africa Report, No. 61, January 30, 2007, p. 8.
151. Ibid., Summary, pp. 22-23.
152. Caryle Murphy, Passion for Islam Shaping the Modern Middle
East, The Egyptian Experience, New York: Scribner, 2002, p. 279.
153. Fawaz Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global, New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 275-276.
154. Amaney Jamal, “Who are the Democrats and Islamists in
the Arab World?” World Affairs, Fall 2006. Jamal used data from the
World Values Survey for Egypt and Jordan, showing that income
and attitudes about gender appeared to affect stronger Islamism
or democratic views; class, or at least income levels, played a role
too, so that lower income and “poor gender attitudes” defined as
not “pro-woman” were more strongly Islamist than democratic.
Unfortunately, the World Values Survey asks only a few questions
on Islamism, but Jamal’s conclusions are in line with regional
specialists’ assessments, and contradict some ideas found in the
Western media.
155. Wickham, Mobilizing Islam, p. 67. Here Wickham refers
to his May Day speech of 1989 and one given at Alexandria
University in 1992.
156. President Mubarak speaking at the Al-Masa’i al-Mashkura
School in the Minufiyya Governorate, Middle East News Agency,
July 28, 2005.

123
 157. Gamal Essam Al-Din, “The Article That Never Goes
Away,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue 818, November 1-7, 2006.
158. That, in fact, was the reason that both Saad Eddin Ibrahim
and Nawal al-Saadawi had to give up their efforts to run as
President in the last election.
159. As in Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa Lappen, “Ban the
Brotherhood,” FrontPage Magazine.com, December 27, 2005.
160. Tamir Moustafa, “Conflict and Cooperation between
the State and Religious Institutions in Contemporary Egypt,”
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 32, 2000, pp. 3-22.
161. Abaza, p. 4.
162. Ninette S. Fahmy, The Politics of Egypt: State-Society
Relationship, London: Routledge, 2002, pp. 136, 143-148.
163. Maggie Michael, Associated Press, September 7 2005,
available at www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20050907-0901-
egypt-election.html.
164. “Egypt Vote Monitors Beaten, Barred Access,” September
7, 2005, available at www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=14479.
165. Jeremy Sharp, Congressional Record Service (CRS)
Report to Congress, “Egypt: 2005 Presidential and Parliamentary
Elections,” September 21, 2005.
166. Chayma Hassabo, “Moubarak ‘sans cravate’: Un Moubarak
‘démocratique’”? (Mubarak ‘with No Tie’: A Democratic
Mubarak”? in Kohstall, Dir. L’Égypte dans l’annee 2005, p. 49.
167. “Clashes at Egypt Judicial Protest,” BBC News, April 24,
2006.
168. Interview with Tariq al-Bishri, al-Dustur, October 11, 2006,
available in English at www.ikhwan.tv/Home.asp?zPage=Systems&S
ystem=PressR&Press=Show&Lang=E&ID=5460.
169. Nathan J. Brown, Michele Dunn, and Amr Hamzavy,
“Egypt’s Constitutional Amendments,” Washington, DC:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 23, 2007.
170. Siraj Mufti, Muslim American Society, September 25, 2006;
also see photo of election banner posted at www.ordoesitexplode.
com/me/2005/08/cairo_snapshot_.html; Jennifer Peterson, “Painting
the Roses Red, White, and Blue in Egypt,” Washington Report on
Middle East Affairs, Vol. 24, September-October 2005. Posters also

124
said the “fetus in his mother’s womb votes for Mubarak.” Other
banners denigrated Ayman Nur with a reference to Albright who
he met shortly before going to prison, asking “whose son are you,
Ibn al-Madeleine?”
171. “The Muslim World After 9/11,” RAND, www.rand.
org; and as cited in “Generating Alternatives to Radical Islam,”
World Trends; The Futurist, May/June 2005, p. 15; Larry Diamond,
Remarks at “Democratizing the Middle East?” Conference, Tufts
University, Medford, MA, Janaury 26-27, 2006; and included
in “Democratizing the Middle East,” Occasional Paper, No. 2,
Boston: Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, Tufts
University, 2006, p. 48.
172. For example, F. Gregory Gause III, “Can Democracy Stop
Terrorism?” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005.
173. Ilya Harik, Economic Policy Reform in Egypt, Gainesville:
University Press of Florida, 1997, pp. 212-213.

125
 REFERENCES

Books and Monographs.

`Abd al-Rahman, `Umar. Kalimat al-haqq. Cairo: Dar al-Itisam,

1987.

Abdo, Geneive. No God but God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam.
New York: Oxford University Press.

Abou El-Fadl, Khaled. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.

Aboul-Einein, Youssef and Zuhur, Sherifa. Islamic Rulings on

Warfare. Carlisle Barracks: Strategic Studies Institute, 2004.

Amin, Galal. Al-Tanwir al-Za’if. Cairo: Dar El Ein, 2005.

_______. Whatever Happened to the Egyptians? Changes in Egyptian

Society from 1950 to the Present. Cairo: American University in
Cairo Press, 2000.

Baker, Raymond William. Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New
Islamists. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press, 1993.

______. Egypt’s Uncertain Revolution Under Nasser and Sadat.

Cambridge: Harvard University, 1978.

Bar, Shmuel. Warrant for Terror: The Fatwas of Radical Islam and the
Duty to Jihad. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.

al-Bishri, Tariq. al-Jama`a al-wataniyya: al-’uzla wa al-indimaj (The

National Group: Isolation and Integration), Cairo: Kitab al-Hilal,
2005.

Brumberg, Daniel. Democratization Versus Liberalization in the Arab

World: Dilemmas and Challenges for U.S. Foreign Policy. Carlisle
Barracks: Strategic Studies Institute, 2005.

127
Clark, Janine. Islam, Charity, and Activism: Middle-Class Networks
and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2003.

Economist Intelligence Unit. Country Report. “Egypt.” London:

February 2007.

Elyachar, Julia. Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic

Development, and the State in Cairo. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2006.

Esposito, John and Voll, John. Islam and Democracy: Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996.

Fahmy, Ninette S. The Politics of Egypt: State-Society Relationship.

London: Routledge, 2002.

Fattah, Moataz. Democratic Values in the Muslim World. Boulder:

Lynne Rienner, 2006.

Gerges, Fawaz. The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Ghanem, Farha. Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation and the

Politics of Identity in Global Cairo. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2002.

Guenena, Nemat. “The ‘Jihad’: An ‘Islamic Alternative’ in Egypt.”

Cairo Papers in Social Science. Vol. 9, Monograph 2, Summer,
1986.

Harik, Ilya. Economic Policy Reform in Egypt. Gainesville: University

Press of Florida, 1997.

Hopwood, Derek. Egypt, Politics and Society, 1945-1984. Boston,

Unwin Hyman, 1985.

Ibrahim, Saad Eddin. Egypt, Islam, and Democracy. Cairo: American

University in Cairo Press, 1996.

Kassem, Maye. Egyptian Politics: The Dynamics of Authoritarian

Rule. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004.

128
Kepel, Giles. Muslim Extremism in Egypt: The Prophet and the
Pharaoh. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Kohstall, Florian, ed (dir.). L’Ēgypte dans l’année 2005. Cairo:

CEDEJ, 2006.

Lavie, Smadar. The Poetics of Military Occupation: Mzeina Allegories

of Bedouin Identity under Israeli and Egyptian Rule. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1990.

Lesch, Ann Mosely and Tessler, Mark. Israel, Egypt, and the
Palestinians: From Camp David to Intifada. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1989.

Maghraoui, Abdeslam M. Liberalism without Democracy: Nationhood

and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922-1936. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2006.

Mayfield, James B. Rural Politics in Nasser’s Egypt: A Quest for

Legitimacy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971.

El-Mikawy, Noha. The Building of Consensus in Egypt’s Transition

Process. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1999.

Mitchell, Richard P. The Society of the Muslim Brothers (revised

edition). New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity.

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

Moussalli, Ahmad S. Moderate and Radical Islamic Fundamentalism:

The Quest for Modernity, Legitimacy, and the Islamic State.
Gainesville, FL: University of Florida, 1999.

Murphy, Caryle. Passion for Islam: Shaping the Modern Middle East,
The Egyptian Experience. New York: Scribner, 2002.

al-Najjar, Ahmad Al-Sayyid. Al-Inhiyar al-iqtisadi fi `asr Mubarak

(The Collapse of the Economy under Mubarak). Cairo: Merit Press,
2005.

129
Ottaway, Marina. Democracy Challenge, The Rise of Semi-
Authoritarianism. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2003.

Peters, Rudolph. Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam. Princeton:

Markus Wiener, 1996.

Qaradawi, Yusuf, al- Al-Islam wa-l-`ilmaniyya wajhan li wajh (Islam

and Secularism Face to Face). Beirut: al-Risala, 1990.

_________. al-Sahwa al-islamiyya (The Islamic Awakening) bayna al-

ikhtilaf al-mashru` wa-l-ikhtilaf al-madhmun. Beirut: al-Risala,
2000.

Ramadan, `Abd al-`Azim. Misr fi ahd al-Sadat (Egypt in Sadat’s Era).

Beirut: Dar al-Ruqi, 1986.

Roy, Olivier. Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Safi, Omid, ed. Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and

Pluralism. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2003.

Sayyid Qutb, al-Ma`alim fi tariq. Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1980.

Sayyid Ahmed, Rif`at, ed. The Militant Prophet. 2 Vols. London:

Riad El-Rayyes, 1991.

Shadid, Anthony. Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the

New Politics of Islam. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001.

Al-Shahid, Abd al-Qadir. al-Ikhtiraq: Qissat sharikat tawzif al-amwal.

Cairo: Sina` lil-Nashr, 1989.

Singerman, Diane. Avenues of Participation: Family, Politics, and

Networks in Urban Quarters of Cairo. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1985.

Sivan, Emmanuel. Radical Islam, Medieval Theology and Modern

Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Sonbol, Amira. The New Mamluks. Syracuse: Syracuse University

Press, 2000.

130
Springborg, Robert. Mubarak’s Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political
Order. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989.

Sullivan, Denis and Abed-Kotob, Sana. Islam in Contemporary

Egypt: Civil Society vs. the State. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner,
1999.

Tabory, Mala. The Multinational Force and Observers in the Sinai:

Organization, Structure, and Function. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1986.

Wickham, Carrie Rosefsky. Mobilizing Islam: Religion, Activism

and Political Change in Egypt. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2002.

Wiktorowicz, Quintan, ed. Islamic Activism: A Social Movement

Theory Approach. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2004.

Zghal, Malika. Gardiens de l’Islam: Les oulémas d’Al-Azhar dans

l’Égypte contemporaine (Guardians of Islam: The `Ulama of al-
Azhar in Contemporary Egypt). Paris: Presses de Sciences PO,
1996.

Zuhur, Sherifa. A Hundred Osamas: Islamist Threats and The Future of

Counterinsurgency. Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2006.

_______. The Middle East: Politics, History, and Neonationalism.

Carlisle, PA: Institute of Middle Eastern, Islamic, and
Diasporic Studies, 2005.

_______. Revealing Reveiling: Islamist Gender Ideology in Contemporary

Egypt. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Chapters in Books

Auda, Gehad. “An Uncertain Response: The Islamic Movement in

Egypt.” In Islamic Fundamentalisms and the Gulf Crisis, edited
by James Piscatori. Chicago: American Academy of Arts and
Sciences with the Fundamentalism Project, 1991.

Azzam, Maha. “Egypt: The Islamists and the State under

131
 Mubarak.” In Islamic Fundamentalism, edited by Abdel Salam
Sidahmed and Anoushirvan Ehteshami. Boulder: Westview
Press, 1996.

Binder, Leonard. “The Religious Aesthetic of Sayyid Qutb: A

Non-Scriptural Fundamentalism.” In Leonard Binder, Islamic
Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Shboul, Ahmad. “Between Rhetoric and Reality: Islam and Politics

in the Arab World.” In Islam in World Politics, edited by Nelly
Lahoud and Anthony H. Johns. London: Routledge, 2005.

Shukrallah, Hani. “Political Crisis/Conflict in post-1967 Egypt.”

In Egypt under Mubarak, edited by Charles Tripp and Roger
Owen. London: Routledge, 1989.

Sullivan, Denis. “Extra-State Actors and Privatization in Egypt.” In

Privatization and Liberalization in the Middle East, edited by Ilya
Harik and Denis Sullivan. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1992.

Voll, John. “Fundamentalism in the Arab World: Egypt and the

Sudan.” In Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by Martin E.
Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1991

Zuhur, Sherifa. “A New Phase for Jihad in Egypt?” In Unmasking

Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities, edited by
Christopher Heffelfinger. Washington, DC: Jamestown
Foundation, 2006.

________. “ State Power and the Progress of Militant and Moderate

Islamism in Egypt.” In Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in
the 21st Century, edited by James Forest. Vol. III. New York:
Praeger Security, 2007.

Articles and Papers.

Abaza, Khairi. “Sharm al-Shaykh Bombings: The Egyptian

Context.” Washington Institute for Near East Policy. August
12, 2005.

132
_______. “Political Islam and Regime Survival in Egypt.” Policy
Focus. #51. Washington Institute for Near East Policy. January
2006.

Akhter U. Ahmed, et al. The Egyptian Food Subsidy System:

Structure, Performance and Options for Return Research Report
119, Washington DC: International Food Policy Research
Institute, 2001.

Amer, Pakinam. “Activists Protest Pre-trial Treatment of

Detainees.” And “Brotherhood Speaks Out on Renewal of
Emergency Law.” Daily Star (Egypt), May 8, 2006.

Azzam, Maha. “Al-Qaeda Five Years On: The Threat and the
Challenges.” Chatham House. Royal Institute of International
Affairs, 2006.

Beitler, Ruth M. and Jebb, Cindy R. “Egypt As A Failing State:

Implications for US National Security.” INSS Occasional
Paper #51, July 2003.

Brown, Nathan J., Dunn, Michele and Hamzawy, Amr. “Egypt’s

Controversial Constitutional Amendments,” Washington,
DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, March 23,
2007.

CNN. “Terrorism in Egypt” Aired May 9, 2006. Transcript

archived at transcripts.cnn.com.

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress. (Jeremy

Sharp) “Egypt: Background and U.S. Relations.” Updated
June 14, 2006.

Consolatare, Daniel. “Living with Democracy in Egypt.” The

Humanist. Vol. 65, Iss. 6, Nov/Dec. 2005.

Davis, Nancy J. and Robinson, Robert V. “The Egalitarian Face

of Islamic Orthodoxy: Support for Islamic Law and Economic
Justice in Seven Muslim-Majority Nations. American
Sociological Review. Vol. 71, Issue 2, April 2006.

Dawoud, Khaled. “Concepts of Jihad.” Al-Ahram Weekly Online.

January 11-17, 2001. weekly. Ahram.org.eg.

133
Dorff, Robert H. “Failed States After 9/11: What Did We Know and
What Have We Learned?” International Studies Perspectives, 6,
2005, pp. 20-34.

The Economist. “Egypt. The President Digs in, Yet Again.”

November 30, 2006.

Essam El-Din, Gamal. “Unmasked Condemnation.” Al-Ahram

Weekly Online. Issue No. 825, December 21-27, 2006.

El-Ghobashy, Mona. “The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim

Brothers.” International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 37,
No. 3, August 2005.

Fahmy, Nabil. “Egypt’s Unwavering Path to Democratic Reform.”

Mediterranean Quarterly. Vol. 17, No. 3, Summer 2006.

Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, “Democratizing

the Middle East,” Occasional Paper, No. 2, 2006.

Gerges, Fawaz. “The Decline of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria

and Egypt.” Survival, Vol. 41, No. 1, March 1999.

Halawi, Jailan. “In Hot Pursuit.” Al-Ahram Weekly. Issue No. 795,
May 18-24, 2006.

Hammond, Andrew. “Between the Ballot and the Bullet: Egypt’s

War on Terrorism.” World Press Review Online. November 15,
2001. www.worldpress.org/mideast/1114web_egypt.htm.

Hamzawy, Amr and Brown, Nathan J. “Can Egypt’s Troubled

Elections Produce a More Democratic Future?” Policy Outlook.
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, December
2005.

Hamzawy, Amr and McFaul, Michael. “The U.S. and Egypt:

Giving Up On the ‘Liberty Doctrine.’” International Herald
Tribune, July 3, 2006.

Hanley, Delinda C. “Paradox of the Free Press in Egypt.”

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. Vol. 25, Issue 8,
November 2006.

134
Hennion, Cécile. “Les faces cachées du Sinai.” Le Monde, April 26,
2006.

Hilfe Daily Briefing. “Egypt: Speculation About Early Gamal

Succession,” June 29, 2006.

Ibrahim, Saad Eddin. “Hosni Mubarak’s Offensive against

Egyptian Judiciary Backfires.” Tapei Times. June 5, 2006.

_______. “Islam Can Vote If We Let It.” New York Times. May 21,
2005.

_______. “Reform and Frustration in Egypt.” Journal of Democracy.

October 1996.

_______. “Egypt’s Islamic Activism in the 1980s,” Third World

Quarterly. Vol. 10, April 1988.

_______. “Anatomy of Egypt’s Militant Islamic Groups:

Methodological Note and Preliminary Findings,” International
Journal of Middle East Studies. Vol. 12, No. 4, p. 980, 1980.

“Inside the Muslim Brotherhood—An Interview with Abdul

Moneim Abu El-Foutouh.” (Interviewer Mahan Abedin)
Islamism Digest. August 2006.

International Crisis Group. “Reforming Egypt: In Search of a

Strategy.” Middle East/North Africa Report, No. 46, October 4,
2005.

_______. “Egypt’s Sinai Question.” Middle East/North Africa

Report N. 61, January 30, 2007.

IRIN, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian

Affairs, “Egypt: Despite Advances, Many Egyptians Struggle
to Feed Families.” February 16, 2007. www.irinnews.org/report.
aspx?reportid=26241

Irin.News.Org. “Egypt: Rice Fails on Rights and Governance

Issues, Say Analysts.” October 24, 2006.

Iskander, Adel. “Egypt’s Media Deficit.” Georgetown Journal of

135
 International Affairs. Vol. 7, Issue 1, Winter 2006.

Jamal, Amaney. “The Arab Democratic Deficit and Status

of Women.” Paper presented at the Middle East Studies
Association Annual Meetings, Washington, DC, November
21, 2006.

_______. “Who Are The Democrats And Islamists in The Arab

World?” World Affairs, Fall 2006.

Karawan, Ibrahim. “Violence and Strategic Choices: The Case of

Islamic Militancy.” Center for Security Studies and Conflict
Research, 2002.

Kubba, Laith. “Faith and Modernity.” Journal of Democracy, April

2003.

Langohr, Vickie. “Of Islamists and Ballot Boxes: Rethinking the

Relationship between Islamisms and National Politics.”
International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4,
November 2001.

Meital, Yoram. “The Struggle over Political Order in Egypt: The

2005 Elections.” Middle East Journal. Vol. 60, Issue 4, Spring
2006.

Moustafa, Tamir. “Conflict and Cooperation between the State and

Religious Institutions in Contemporary Egypt.” International
Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 32, 2000, pp. 3-22.

Peterson, Jennifer. “Painting the Roses Red, White and Blue in

Egypt.” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Vol. 24,
September-October 2005.

Seel, Cache. “One Month Later.” Egypt Today. June 2006.

Shishani, Murad al- “Egypt Breaks Up al-Ta’efa al-Mansoura

Jihadist Group.” Terrorism Focus. Vol. 3, Issue 10, April 25,
2006.

Tammam, Husam. “Revisions douloureuses pour les Frères

musulmans d’Égypte.” Le Monde Diplomatique. September
2005.

136
Toth, James. “Islamism in Southern Egypt: A Case Study of a
Radical Religious Movement.” International Journal of Middle
East Studies. Vol. 35, No. 4, November 2003.

Ulph, Stephen. “Clashes in Egypt with Sinai Bedouin Mujahideen.”

Terrorism Focus. Vol. 2, Issue 18, October 4, 2005.

U.S. Government Accountability Office. “Security Assistance: State

and DOD Need to Assess How the Foreign Military Financing
Program for Egypt Achieves U.S Foreign Policy and Security
Goals.” Report to the Committee on International Relations,
House of Representatives. April 2006.

Weaver, Mary Anne. “Pharoahs-in-Waiting. Who Will Succeed

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak as the Ruler of the World’s Most
Populous and Important Arab Country?” The Atlantic.
October 2003.

Yacoubian, Mona. “Democracy and Islamist Parties: The Arab

Experience.” The Aspen Institute, June 2006.

Zambelis, Chris. “Egyptian Gama`a al-Islamiyya’s Public Relations

Campaign.” Terrorism Focus. Vol. 3, Issue 35, September 12,
2006.

_________. “Sinai Bombings Mark Latest in Pattern of Symbolic

Attacks in Egypt.” Terrorism Focus. Vol. 3, Issue 17, May 2,
2006.

al-Zayyat, Montasser. Ayman al-Zawahiri kama `ariftahu (Ayman al-

Zawahiri as I Knew Him), Cairo: Dar Misr Al Mahrousa, 2002.

Zuhur, Sherifa. “Freeing Egyptian Wives. “ Women’s International

Magazine. No. 30, March 2000.

_______. “The New Jihad,” Terrorism Bulletin, Wilberforce Quarterly,

Spring 2006.

137
 GLOSSARY

Abu Ghazalah, Muhammad Abd al-Halim (b. 1930). A former

Minister of Defense, then a presidential advisor in 1989 who
departed the political scene about 1993.

Akef, Muhammad Mehdi. The General Guide of the Egyptian

Muslim Brotherhood.

`Amma. Popular social class. The ordinary Egyptian people of the

lower and lower middle classes. The word for colloquial Arabic
(the language of the ordinary people) `ammiyya, is related to this
word.

`Amn al-Dawla. The ordinary name, meaning “state security” for

the State Security Investigations Sector (SSIS), the internal security
arm of the Egyptian government.

Apostasy. One of the most serious crimes in Islamic law, meaning

the denial of one’s Islamic faith. This denial, however, cannot be
coerced, and it must be admitted by the apostate, who should
have an opportunity to recant.

Arab Socialism. A philosophy that developed both under the

Ba`th and other groups in Syria and later, Iraq, and in Egypt under
President Gamal abd al-Nasir. It differed from classic European-
based socialism in its focus on Arab identity and unity as well
as the aim for greater social and economic equality to be enacted
by the state. Land reform, state subsidies and nationalizations of
large industries and banks were all viewed as Arab socialism.

Arab Socialist Union. A political party founded in Egypt by

President Gamal abd al-Nasir as the country’s sole political
organization which was intended to provide a vehicle for the
Egyptian people to support the goals of the 1952 Revolution, Arab
unity and Arab socialism.

Arian, `Isam, al- (Esam). A medical doctor and long-time Egyptian

Muslim Brotherhood leader arrested in 2007.

Awqaf. Plural of waqf which is a form of endowment in perpetuity.

Muslims could designate income-earning assets or property as

139
awqaf, and the government was not supposed to seize this property
as state land (although, in fact, that occurred). Egypt, like some
other Muslim states, has a ministry that administers and deals
with this type of endowment.

Azhar, al- An Islamic university in Cairo. Religious officials

associated with al-Azhar may issue statements on matters of
religion for the government, review publications, and credential
and regulate preachers and teachers.

Banna, Hasan al- The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928

and its first General Guide. Al-Banna promoted the activity of
da`wah which means preaching, Islamic education and generally
spreading the Islamic message through non-violent activities.

Bashawat. Pashas. Honorific term for the elites, especially the

landed elite prior to 1952.

Bedouin. Arab tribes, pastoral or sedentarized (settled). The

bedouin speak a different Arab dialect and have many customs
that differ from other Egyptians.

Bright Star. A biannual exercise conducted by the Egyptian

military along with the U.S. military and a number of other
country partners to improve their capabilities.

Caliphate. The first Muslim political institution, created when the

Prophet Muhammad died and he was succeeded by Caliph (khalifa,
or follower) Abu Bakr. Muslims give an oath of allegiance to the
caliph who should come from the Quraysh tribe and ensure the
pious observance of Islamic law. The caliphate actually splintered
into many smaller states, though a Caliph remained in Baghdad
until the 1055 sack of the city, and then again, until the Mongol
invasion. Some contemporary Muslim groups have discussed
or actually aim to revive the caliphate in place of other forms of
government. Other Muslims hold that the modern nation-states
have acquired their own identities and it would be difficult for a
caliphate to be reestablished.

Copts. Members of the Christian Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt.

The church is based is on the teachings of Saint Mark. The name
comes from the Greek word Aigyptos. They are approximately

140
12 to 13 percent of the Egyptian population. Radical Islamists
targeted some Copts and Coptic-owned businesses during the
period of Islamist violence in Egypt.

Dar al-Harb. Literally, house or domain of war, meaning a

territory controlled by non-Muslims and in which Muslims should
follow Islamic law, but the requirements are, at times necessarily,
different than in the territory governed by Muslims.

Dar al-Islam. Literally, house or domain of Islam, a territory

governed by Muslim rulers.

Da`wah. The mission to spread Islam in the world and re-energize

Muslims in their faith, causing society to function in a more
Islamic manner. This mission is conducted through education,
social organization and political activity.

Delta. Refers to the fertile area where the Nile River forks and
splits into smaller branches in the north of Egypt.

Dhimma. Originally referred to Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians,

but later the Peoples of the Book to include another religion with a
holy scripture. In an Islamic state, the non-Muslim scripturalists’
status is that of ahl al-dhimma, the People of the Pact of Protection.
They paid a poll tax, and had their own religious leadership,
but were legally and politically subject to Muslims in certain
definitions of Islamic law. Because Egyptian Copts and other
Christians are equal to Muslims under Egyptian law, there has
been a debate about the status of dhimma in an Islamic state. As
the Coptic Church experienced a religious revival alongside the
one occurring with Muslims, some tensions emerged over the
rights to build churches or mosques and in intergroup relations.

Faraj, Muhammad Abd al-Salam. A leader of the Egyptian Islamic

Jihad group, the organization that assassinated President Anwar
al-Sadat. Faraj’s tract, al-Farida al-Gha’iba (The Missing Duty) which
promoted militant jihad, had a strong influence on Islamic Jihad
and other jihadist organizations.

Faruq, King. King of Egypt from 1936-52 when the Egyptian

Revolution (a military coup) forced him to abdicate. He was the
son of King Fu’ad I, and his family had ruled Egypt as viceroys in

141
the 19th century, and continued their rule as the British retreated
from direct rule of the country.

Ghad Party, al-. New party whose leader, Ayman Nour, broke off
from the Wafd Party. Ghad means tomorrow.

Hajj. The annual pilgrimage to Makka in Saudi Arabia. Required

of Muslims at least once in their lifetime if they can afford the
journey.

Hakmiyyah. The idea that the sovereign can only be God (Allah)
and not a temporal authority, especially if that authority supports
un-Islamic laws and actions. Hasan al-Banna as well as Abu al-
`Ala al-Mawdudi wrote about this concept.

Hatata, Magdi. Chief of Staff of the Egyptian armed forces.

Hijrah. Emigration. Refers to the Prophet Muhammad’s flight

from Makka to Yathrib (later Madina) with the early Muslims. It
also refers to emigration in general.

Hijab. Islamic covering for women. Refers specifically to the head-

covering adopted by many Muslim women since the 1970s that
covers the hair and neck, but reveals the face. Earlier and alternate
veiling traditions exist. Sometimes women also wear longer, more
concealing clothing, in addition to head scarves.

Hisba. The general injunction to command the “good” (that

which is Islamically lawful) and forbid the “evil” (that which is
disallowed in Islamic law). The ruler of an Islamic state should
uphold the hisba. However, in many modern states, no punishments
for infractions of Islamic law are meted out. In others, like Saudi
Arabia, they are, and a volunteer force, the mutawa`in, deputize
themselves to warn or punish offenders.

Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami. Islamic Liberation Party established by

Shaykh Taqi al-Din Nabhani in Jerusalem in 1953.

Hizbiyya. Partisanship. A focus or emphasis on political party

membership. This type of allegiance was denounced by Hasan
al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood because he
thought that Muslims should not divided and factionalized in

142
this way, and also, that the Ikhwan, the Brotherhood, should be
more encompassing, and operate on social, educational, cultural,
economic, legal fronts, and not only with regard to political
activity.

`Id al-Fitr. The feast at the end of the month of Ramadan, during
which Muslims fast during the daylight hours. Id al-Fitr and the
Id al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice are major holidays in the
Muslim world.

Infitah. The policies of “economic opening.” President Sadat

initiated a new law and policies intended to allow more foreign
imports at lower tariffs (not always low) in contrast with the
protective policies under Abd al-Nasir; privatization, in contrast
to the public ownership policies and large public sector areas;
allowing for rent increases and changes in land and property
rents; encouraging of joint ventures which could include non-
local partners; and overall conversion of the economy to a more
liberal or laissez-faire system.

Infitahiyyun. Persons and social groups who benefited from the

policies of the Infitah. These included certain types of tradesmen,
those investing in construction, businessmen, and many others,
but not professionals who drew a modest salary from the public
sector which decreased in value due to inflation.

Islamist. Term that refers to Muslims who would prefer a more

religiously conservative government in Egypt, or one based
entirely on Islamic law. Some Islamists may not oppose the
government while others may, hence the term is NOT synonymous
with “political Islam.” As Islamist views are broader and more
disparate than the word “fundamentalism” would imply, this
term is preferred in academic or scholarly materials. However,
Islamists may not like the term and say they are merely “Muslims.”
In Egypt, some refer to Islamists as “sunniyyun,” “islamiyyun,” or
“salafiyyun.”

Istishhad. The action of martyrdom. Whereas, martyrs should

not commit suicide or kill innocents, radical Islamists and others
refer to suicide attacks as acts of martyrdom.

Jahiliyya. The pre-Islamic era, considered an age of barbarism.

Contemporary Islamist militants charge the Egyptian government

143
and leaders of recreating jahiliyya because they do not follow
Islamic law, the shari`ah.

Jama`at Islamiyya. (Gama`at al-Islamiyyah) Literally means

“Islamic Groups,” and referred originally to Islamist student
organizations, study groups, and also a militant organization
with root both in southern and north-central Egypt. By the 1980s,
the term was used most often to describe that umbrella militant
organization, whose spiritual leader was alleged to be `Umar ibn
Abd al-Rahman. The JI declared a truce in their hostilities with the
Egyptian government in 1999.

Jihad. Struggle or war “in the path of Allah.” Frequently defined

in English as “holy war,” Muslims distinguish between the greater
jihad, the daily struggle to fulfill the requirements and ideals of
Islam and the lesser jihad, which is fighting to defend Islam, or
for the faith.

Jihad, Egyptian Islamic. (Gihad Islami) A militant Islamist

organization whose members assassinated President Anwar al-
Sadat in 1981. Many Jihad members were put on trial or tried
in abstentia in Egypt and some fled the country like Ayman al-
Zawahiri who joined forces with Usama bin Ladin in Afghanistan.
Other Jihad members declared a truce in their conflict with the
Egyptian government in 1999. This organization should be
differentiated from Palestinian Islamic Jihad based in Damascus,
currently led by Ramadan Abdullah Shallah.

Kalam fadi. Literally, empty talk, or easy words. Equivalent to

empty promises, or “all talk, no action,” in English.

Khalid, `Amr. An Islamist preacher and televangelist who became

very popular, and was forced to leave the country, charged with
being a sort of Islamist Rasputin. He was especially attractive to
youth because he spoke plainly about contemporary issues. Not a
cleric, he wore a suit and did not radiate an aura of extremism. His
ideas included self-motivation, self-improvement and sincerity.
He continued his programming after moving from Egypt to
Lebanon to London.

Khassa. Elite groups in society. In Egyptian history these included

the ruling dynasties of Mamluks, and other Turko-Circassian

144
families, as well as the military and some of the merchant groups.
In the contemporary period, Egypt has a small ultra-wealthy elite,
and a somewhat larger group of nouveaux riches.

Kifaya. A political movement that took the name “Enough!”

to demonstrate frustration with the political status quo in
Egypt. Kifaya is not a large political party, but more of a protest
movement. For many years, public demonstrations were not
permitted in Egypt, although they were occasionally held. Thus,
merely demonstrating about a political issue is an important
statement.

Khul`. A means of divorce initiated by women who agree to give

up the normal bride price, or mahr paid in an Islamic marriage
which is usually given one-half at the contraction of the marriage,
while one-half is deferred in case of divorce. The khul` is like a
ransom payment, as the woman also gives back to the groom the
jewelery and gifts that are a typical part of the marriage. The “khul`
law” was actually a package of reforms for women that included
this method of easier and swifter divorce for women.

MFO. Multinational peacekeeping forces under the auspices of

the United Nations situated in the Sinai peninsula to observe
and prevent violations of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. These
forces have about 30 observer locations and two base camps, one
in the north not far from al-Arish and the Israeli border and the
other in the southern part of the Sinai at Sharm al-Shaykh.

Mubarak, Gamal. Son of President Husni Mubarak of Egypt. A

leader in the National Democratic Party.

Mubarak, Husni. President of Egypt from 1981 to the present

(2007). Mubarak assumed power after Sadat’s assassination.
He moderated both the economic opening of Egypt and the
implementation of coordinated activities with Israel as neither
policy has been entirely popular. He is also the head of the
Democratic National Party, the largest political party and heir to
Nasir’s Arab Socialist Union.

Muslim Brotherhood. Also referred to as Ikhwan al-Muslimin,

or simply Ikhwan (Brethren). An Islamist organization founded
in Isma’iliyya, Egypt, in March 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a

145
schoolteacher to promote an Islamic way of life through education
and organized activities. The Brotherhood developed separate and
autonomous branches in many other countries. A secret military
wing of the organization was operative in the 1940s and allegedly
in the 1950s leading to the outlawing, imprisonment and exile of
members in the Nasir years. Muslim Brotherhood members were
released from jail in the 1970s and have continued a wide range of
social and political activities until today.

Nasir, Jamal (Gamal in the Egyptian dialect) abd al-. President

of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasir formed a group
within the military known as the Free Officers to overthrow
the Egyptian monarchy and evacuate British troops from the
country. They carried out their plan in 1952. Some of his policies
and positions were very popular, including Arab unity and his
emphasis on the needs and rights of the ordinary Egyptian. But
land reform policies and state seizures of private holdings were
not popular with the elites they disempowered, and his Arab
socialist policies were not ever fully nor successfully enacted
in Egypt. He supported nonalignment, yet obtained arms and
military advisors from the Soviet Union and Bloc.

National Democratic Party. Formerly the Arab Socialist Union

and established in 1978 by the late President Anwar Sadat. After
his death, President Husni Mubarak headed the Party. The Party
no longer supports Arab socialism, but instead the importance of
the private sector. Its basic principles are somewhat vague, in that
it affirms the state, and was, until 2005, nearly inseparable from
it. It upholds Egyptian identity and Egypt’s links with Arab and
Islamic nations.

Niqab. A face veil worn by Muslim women in addition to

garments that cover their hair and conceal their bodies. The niqab
became an important marker of more conservative Muslims as
well as those identifying with Islamist groups. It is also popular
in the countries of the Arabian Gulf. Islamists and non-Islamists
who wear it believe that it is required under Islamic law, but other
Muslim women disagree.

Nour, Ayman. Leader of al-Ghad Party. Ran for president in

2005 and was jailed on what his supporters say are trumped-up
charges.

146
Qa’iduna (or qa’idin). Those who “sit” and do not participate in
jihad, though they know it is required.

Qaradawi, Shaykh Yusuf al-. A long-time member of the Muslim

Brotherhood living in exile in Qatar where his extremely popular
television program airs on Al Jazeera Television. Al-Qaradawi is
an Islamist, but more moderate than many others. His position on
women’s rights is protested by Arab feminists and he is a strong
proponent of the Palestinian cause.

Qutb, Sayyid. A Muslim Brotherhood leader executed in prison

in 1966 by the government of Gamal abd al-Nasir. Sayyid Qutb
studied for three years in the United States. His most important
written work is probably Fi Dhill al-Qur’an (In the Shade of the
Qur’an), a work of exegesis (tafsir) which demonstrates his Islamist
ideas, but he is perhaps better known outside of the Middle East
for his last book, Ma`alim fi Tariq (Signposts on the Road), because
of its dark assessment of his era and assertion that jihad and
martyrdom are necessary to fight un-Islamic governments.

Qutbism. A term some use to attribute Islamist extremism to

ideas in Sayyid Qutb’s final book. The attribution is too narrow.

Sadat, Anwar al-. Vice President of Egypt (1966-70) and President,

1970-81 when he was assassinated by Islamist militants. Sadat
like Nasir was a military officer and member of the revolutionary
Free Officers. He reversed some of Nasir’s domestic and foreign
policies, notably opening Egypt’s economy and traveling to
Jerusalem, and signing the Camp David Accords with Israel.

Sahwa Islamiyya. Islamic awakening. A Muslim way of referring

to the religious revival and growth of Islamist groups that began
in the 1970s.

Salafi. Purist, or reformer. This could refer to different reform

movements, including that led by Muhammad Abduh, an
Egyptian reformer and jurist who called for a modernization of
Islamic thought and education, but today it more often means
followers of the movement led by Muhammad abd al-Wahhab
of the Arabian peninsula or other purists, some of whom want a
return to the practice of the first generations following the Prophet
Muhammad.

147
Sha`b. Like `amma, this word may mean the popular classes, but
it can also refer to the entire Egyptian or Arab people as in Nasir’s
famous statement, “The Arab people are one [united] people.”

Shahada. Martyrdom. Linked to jihad in the thought of Sayyid

Qutb and other jihadists. The argument in classical Islam is that
one cannot choose, or set out to be a martyr, but martyrdom is
desirable.

Shari`ah. Islamic law which is formulated by referring to the

Qur’an, the hadith, (short texts about the Prophet Muhammad’s
life and practices), qiyas (analogy) and ijma` with variations in
each of four different schools of law in Sunni Islam. The Shi`i
jurists also use a principle called ijtihad, a special technique for
jurisprudence.

Shaykh al-Azhar. The most important Islamic official clerical office

in Egypt as the chief representative of the al-Azhar University
and educational network. The Shaykh al-Azhar may issue fatawa
(legal responses), or explain a particular Islamic legal stance;
that in recent years, is usually in tandem with the government’s
position, or a position the Egyptian government wants its citizens
to accept.

Shura. Consultation. The key principle for Islamic government.

One house of the parliament in Egypt is the Shura Council, and
quite a few other Muslim countries call their legislative body the
Majlis al-Shura.

Sukkot. The Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles. A harvest celebration

recognized as a national holiday in Israel. At Sukkot, and other
Jewish holidays, Israelis like to travel to the beaches of the northern
Egyptian Sinai in addition to their own seaside city of Eilat.

Sulaiman, `Umar. The head of the Egyptian General Intelligence

Department.

Syndicates. Egypt’s syndicates are organizations for professionals

in the same occupation. The advocates’ (lawyers’), physicians’,
judges’ or engineers’ syndicates elect representatives and take up
certain political actions vis-à-vis the government. Labor unions
were outlawed in 1954, and strikes and demonstrations are illegal,

148
although they have been held more and more frequently in recent
years.

Ta’ifa al-Mansura. Literally, the Victorious Sect; a group of

radicals from several areas of Cairo that were plotting to attack
tourist sites and assassinate both Muslim and Christian religious
authorities and were captured in the spring of 2006. The group
was led by Abu Bakr al-Masri (Ahmad Basyuni) and Abu Mus`a
(Ahmad Muhammad Ali Gabr), according to a jihadist website.

Takfir. The act of calling someone a non-Muslim, or an enemy

of Muslims. Kufr refers to those who “cover” the truth, and is
the opposite of islam, or submission and surrender to God. The
idea that a Muslim could deny the Muslim legitimacy of the ruler
through takfir came from the medieval writer Ibn Taymiyya, and
was expounded on by many other Muslim writers and preachers,
past and present.

Takfir wa al-Hijrah (Higrah in the Egyptian dialect). The name

Egyptian authorities gave to a violent Islamist sect that believed
all of Egyptian society as well as its President were kufr (non-
Muslim) and they should “migrate” away from society to build
their opposition movement.

Tali`a al-Fath. An Egyptian jihadist group captured in September

2005. The group emerged in 2003 and was alleged to be an offshoot
of Egyptian Islamic Jihad. The name of the group means the
Vanguard of Victory and is the same as that used by the training
camps that al-Qa’ida had established.

Tantawi, Muhammad Husayn. Defense Minister of Egypt and

Field Marshal, born in 1935.

Tarbiyya. Training. As in all cultures, education carries the

ideas of imparting knowledge, ta`lim, and also training, in a
professional, vocational sense and in terms of survival or human
development. While Islamist da`wah activities or Islamic study
circles are intended to enlighten or provide ta`lim, the radical
Islamist groups training programs are much closer to the normal
military activity of training.

Tawhid. The unity of Allah (God) in Islam. The fundamental

expression of monotheism.

149
Tha`r. Revenge. Expressed through vendettas between families,
or between Islamists and police.

`Ulama. Religious scholars, or Muslim clerics. They should possess

`ilm, enlightenment or knowledge and be formally trained.

Ummah. The Muslim community as a whole.

Upper Egypt. Southern Egypt. A poorer and underdeveloped

area, which includes some important Pharaonic sites.

Wafd Party. A nationalist political party that initially sought to

be a delegation (wafd) at the 1919 Paris Peace conference, but the
British denied it that role. Under the leadership of Sa`d Zaghlul,
it became a major party when Egypt obtained independence in
1922. President Nasir dissolved the party in 1952. It reemerged
as the Neo- or New Wafd Party—a nationalist, liberal party—in
1983.

Wasat Party. Wasatiyun has come to mean moderate Islamists

or those who seek a middle ground—not only in Egypt, but also
in Jordan and some other countries. In Egypt, this group broke
away from the Muslim Brotherhood and therefore has somewhat
younger figures than the leadership of the parent party.

Zaghlul, Sa`d. Nationalist leader and politician early in the 20th

century who became the first Speaker of the National Assembly
and, although the British subsequently ruined his career, was
regarded as a hero in the Arab world.

Zakat. A duty incumbent on all Muslims that requires them to

give a set portion of their income and assets to the poor or to
Islam.

Zawahiri, Ayman al- Referred to as Usama bin Ladin’s

spokesman or the second highest figure in al-Qa’ida. Al-Zawahiri
was educated in Cairo as a physician and was jailed and tortured
for his activities in Islamist organizations in Egypt. He fled the
country, made his way to Afghanistan and gave his allegiance to
bin Ladin.

150
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

SHERIFA ZUHUR is Research Professor of Islamic and

Regional Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S.
Army War College. She has been a faculty member at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); the
University of California, Berkeley; California State
University, Sacramento; The American University in
Cairo, and other universities. She first embarked on
research in Egypt more than 33 years ago; worked,
studied, taught, published, and carried out several field
research projects there, including her dissertation work
on the ideology of Egyptian Islamist movements. Dr.
Zuhur has published 14 books and monographs and
more than 103 articles and chapters in edited books. Her
most recent book is The Middle East: Politics, History, and
Neonationalism in the Middle East; and in Arabic, Asrar
Asmahan. Her most recent military monographs are
Iran, Iraq and the United States: The New Triangle’s Impact
on Sectarianism and the Nuclear Threat and Iraq, Women’s
Empowerment and Public Policy. Dr. Zuhur holds a B.A.
in Political Science and Arabic, a Master’s in Islamic
Studies, and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern History, all
from the University of California, Los Angeles.

151